Sanborn Wanders

We’ve climbed up out of the Dead Sea depths, a ~3,000 foot climb. We’re at a small desert town that’s growing fast enough to get designated as a city soon. Lots of Orthodox Jews here. As a result, all the restaurants here have a tiny washbasin right in main room, even the small falafel cafe in town. This allows for ritual washing before eating.

We stayed in a simple but very delightful hostel in a “moshav,” which is an agricultural cooperative. There were some old wooden doors scattered around the place.

Efforts have been made to invest in the area, and lots of donations have come from Australia.

The day was all desert, dry, empty, lovely in an awesome way. The road for the steep climb was closed because some of it is in bad shape and maybe also because it runs through long stretches of military land.

Our hotel is a socialized experiment. It’s a lovely place, with desert style architecture, but the cool thing is that all its profits go into Yerucham’s educational system.

Must go to breakfast… Enjoy!

Today we got back on our bikes and rode along the Dead Sea all day. The wind came from the north, so we had a little push all day. What a wonderful change from the awful head wind we had leaving Jerusalem.

A few km from the kibbutz, we arrived at the deepest place on earth. At 418 meters below sea level, we were at 1370ft below. Yowza!

The ride was along a busy road, with lots of trucks heading south to Eilat or to the large mineral-extraction plant.

Coming along the Dead Sea was pretty cool. The terrain is much like Death Valley, with strange shapes and salt ponds everywhere. The water was an unnatural light blue and the clouds were impressive.

This next sign led to a couple new discoveries: apparently there are many thousands of Thai workers in this area. Who knew?! Often many people will come over from the same village. They have 5-year work permits and go back to Thailand when they finish. (Tip: the fourth language in the sign of Thai).

The other discovery was that Israel placed many land mines along the Jordanian border during the early conflicts. Already not good, but in addition, the flash floods that happen here every year have moved the mines around, so nobody is quite sure where they are now.

We saw some awesome scenery. Check out these shots…

And just when you think the desert is barren and empty, you come across botanical field stations where they have intensive lush vegetable growing. They dig wells here that go down a mile.

This place was an eye-opener for me. Who knew you could grow tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers on such upright trellis? They export $125,000,000 worth of peppers to Europe! And who knew you could grow strawberries overhead in coconut husks? OMG!!

And they grow hyssop, oregano, safe, and other herbs on the columns holding up the roof.

And just to wrap up, we cycled the last five kilometers at the sun went down. Lovely light…

Hanukkah started tonight. Our guides, Amir and his brother Asaf, told us the story. After the Jews revolt against the Syrian Seleucid kingdom succeeded, they needed to cleanse and rededicate the Second Temple, which had been violated by the Syrians. They needed to burn the menorah candles for many days, but they only had enough oil for one day. A miraculous thing happened and the menorah candles burned for eight days. Our bike group had our own portable hanukkah candles in a short cardboard stand. Here’s Asaf telling the story.

Today was a rest day, which I really needed. I don’t know if I’m still fighting my cold or if the killer head winds yesterday just took too much out of me.

We had a short pre-breakfast jaunt and saw some teenage Ibex.

Little did we know that we’d see a fully grown one on the kibbutz lawn when we got back.

A delightful breakfast (I counted 60 different dishes of food available for us!!) followed by a trip down the road to the remote mountain palace/fortress of Masada, built by King Herod in the early years Common Era. This is where the last group of Jews held out against the Romans in 73 CE. The Romans laid siege, but the 960 Jews decided that they would rather kill themselves than surrender. When the tide of battle went against them, the men killed their wives and children, and then each other. When the Romans finally entered the fortress, they found everyone dead except for a couple women and five children who had hidden.

The site was forgotten for centuries, but someone read the Josephus history in the mid-1860s and began to excavate. Much of the site was found intact. Fancy bathrooms with heated floors and mosaics.

Here’s a model of the northern palace:

And here’s our “history lite” talk:

This place was huge. It covered the whole top of this hill, sort of like a butte. And here’s a shot of most of the group as we sat outside the synagogue.

In the afternoon, I wandered over to the kibbutz spa. It’s a lovely place, with an indoor pool full of extremely salty Dead Sea water where you bob like a cork and a beautiful outdoor pool with great views.

That’s all folks… Off to bed!

Jerusalem 2 Petra, another bicycleadventureclub.org expedition. Already very memorable!

After several days of warm sunshine, w managed to arrange our departure in a rain storm. Sheesh… We had a 17km downhill out of Jerusalem, and we did it wet. Ah well… The desert dried us off soon enough.

We passed a great road sign and then arrived at sea level.

Then we dropped down to the Dead Sea itself, down -394 meters (-1,300 ft) below sea level. OMG.

We rode along the Dead Sea for a few hours, into a strong head wind. Very hard riding. My legs are dead.

With various scenic moments…

Then we arrived (finally! This ride was hard!) at Wadi David where we had lunch. This place is mentioned in the bible. Apparently King David came here before he was king.

It’s a very beautiful place. I wandered up a deep ravine alongside a lively ample stream.

It was a gorgeous place. Several waterfalls, stream flowing past the path, cool and green.

And the big double waterfalls:

It was quite delicious. Cool, shady, lush, surrounded by steep bare rock.

More photos than usual, but too amazing to hold back. Enjoy!

Yad Vashem is the Israeli holocaust museum. It’s an incredible place. It’s basically a long tube that you go through. I went in at 11 and found myself at the end at 5pm, needing some food and water. Is intense. Very well done. I know a lot about this period of history but I learned quite a bit more. And the exhibits put it into better context. But no photos. All my shots are of the outside of buildings. The primary architect was Moshe Safdie. Very modern style. Beautiful shapes.

Low key, calm in the old town. Very lovely Airbnb place, sweet host.

Small town/city. Big push to settle new immigrants there: over 200,000 Russians and Ethiopians. No night life really, but some funky places for brunch, so I was happy.

Stores had signs in Russian. I bought loose tea in one place but couldn’t summon up my Russian to exchange conversation. Sigh…

But there are problems with the immigrants, as you can see by these posters:

The reason I came to Beersheva was to visit the dig at Tel Sheba, where I spent the summer after high school. I was with a group through the Jewish Agency and we took several weeks of classes at Tel Aviv University before ending up in an empty sand pit near Beersheva. I was the only gentile. Most of the others were kids from New York, as foreign as the Israelis to me. We got up at 4:30, worked until breakfast. Then a few more hours before writing at lunch time. Then we’d doze in our bunks the rest of the day. It was fun.

There was nothing there on the desert. I mean nothing! There want even anything in Beersheva worth driving over for. Now… Well, it’s all changed.

The empty sand has revealed buildings and walls and cisterns. It used to look like this:

And now it looks like this:

Quite amazing! Now it’s a UNESCO site and they maintain it well.

I wandered the town and found some cool things.

Here is my Airbnb, the metal gate just past the overgrown greenery.

Here’s a beautiful 19th century necklace:

And a cool model town:

And my lunch. I’m liking the sweet thick Turkish coffee!

These two bonus (!) photos are of camels being herded along as a train goes past and a lovely Thai woman I met at the dig. We chatted while the camels went by.

Well, I’ve been in Jerusalem for days and haven’t been able to get my head around what I’m seeing, hearing, thinking… My photos are of the place not the people because I didn’t want to intrude, but the people fascinated me. It felt like I was in another world. Made me realize how accustomed I’ve become to Europe. Sheesh… Now I want to go to Azerbajan and other really Really foreign places.

These two photos are of people rushing to the Western Wall in time for Shabbat.

These men are praying even while waiting in line to get into the Western Wall area. The police check bags as you go in.

And here’s the Shabbat crowd on Friday night:

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Jerusalem is a very intense place. Everyone and everything is full throttle. Focused, enthusiastic, spiritual, thoughtful, deep.

I’m actually in Beersheva overnight and it’s such a relief to be somewhere low key. Sigh!

The distinct and unfamiliar ways that Orthodox Jews dress really the me when I first got here. Now it seems perfectly normal to see boys with shaved heads and ringlets or to see men in black shoes black pants black long coats black hats with black beards and white fringes hanging down their sides. I like the wraps women use for their hair. Very becoming. All the local women and girls wear skirts, often long, often black but not always. Most men wear skull caps, but the young ones wear normal western casual clothes. It kept jangling to my eyes to see a completely western guy smoking and drinking but wearing a skull cap.

And then there are the Catholic nuns and friar. And the Arab men in their long shirts and vests, some with the full long robes. The Arab women cover their heads, but below that varies a lot: jeans, medium-length skirts over leggings, long skirts, and full black robes. What is it with black that everyone wears it?!

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Jerusalem reminds me of Assisi, although white stone not pink. The streets and alleys and buildings all use blocks of white stone. The effect is dazzling and calming, if that isn’t contradictory. I often felt as though I were on a stage set. Simple, good lines and angles. The simplicity of everything using the same materials means you take in the shapes more clearly. Your eye can rest on a detail or can step back and see the whole. Pleasing.

I only had an afternoon and evening in Rome. I stayed at a women’s hostel right in the middle of things. Very comfortable.

When I arrived Apollo was in his element, but Dusk was ready to slip in. It took Night a while to establish her sway but it was total. A full cycle of sun, twilight, darkness…

* * *

I was so happy to have some sunshine and enough light for a photo after I got into Rome from the airport.

I liked the angles and lines in the next shot. There’s a bike path along the Tiber and I went down onto it to get a different view. There are staircases all along the river, although once I was down, it took a long time before I found the next staircase. I feared I’d have to retrace my steps.

A wide apron of rain sweeping down to me.

The rain was well underway as I passed the “wedding cake” building, but patches of blue sky and pink clouds struggle to emerge.

Entering the courtyard of this church felt unreal when I went. Looks like Disney in this photo, don’t you think?

More pics of Manchester… I went for an early morning sun and caught some lovely warm rays. The best time for photos is dawn and dusk. 🙂

Here’s a sampling from my run:

I popped over to Manchester last week to see my youngest brother on his current play, Death of a Salesman, along with my other two brothers. It was the first time we all went together to one of Tom’s plays. We all hope it’s not the last. It was quite wonderful being all together!

A very simple setting: just a table and chair. Stitching the main characters to be black not white really changed the play for me.

Other adventures included the Airbnb place we stayed at. It was in the midst of a major construction area and had the trendy feel of industrial chic. One morning we opened a door in the kitchen/living room and discovered we had our own graffiti wall!

We went out for breakfast on the last morning to a converted marketplace. The food was excellent and the coffee divine!

My own personal highlight was catching up to the medical guy on his bicycle ambulance. He had parked the ambulance outside a building and I finally caught up with him (I’d been running ever since I saw him go by). Apparently English cities have bicycles set up as ambulances. Who knew?!

He said that most medical incidents don’t need an ambulance and, of course, there are places where it’s hard if not impossible to get one anyhow. He said that the bicycles carry everything an ambulance does and get an average of 16 calls a day. Compare that with the 7 that ambulances get.

I’ve seen police on bikes in Seattle, but I’ve never seen a bicycle ambulance ever. And now I have. 🙂