Today we rode from Kibbutz Ketura to Eilat, a total of 58 miles. We went up Meshugaim hill, the one that I talked about going down yesterday. It was a few miles long, 1000 feet of climbing, and at some points reached a 12% grade. It was the first time that I considered 6% grade a break area of a hill. Even with that huge hill, we averaged about 15 miles per hour on the whole ride. Some music that helped me up the hill: Bohemian Rhapsody, Jesus of Suburbia, Stairway to Heaven, and Born to Run. Our first rest stop was a few miles from the top of Meshugaim, at an awesome café where I got the best frozen yogurt I have ever had (goat yogurt, tart like Pinkberry, a little bit like greek yogurt, topped with date honey and granola. We got like 15 jars of date honey that I’m going to put on my frozen yogurt from now on whenever I go to Pinkberry, and we also got some goat cheese. We then rode to the next rest stop, which was in the middle of a firing zone. We waited about 15 minutes for everybody from our spread out group to arrive, and then continued towards lunch. We had lunch at a spot where we could see 4 different countries at the same time: Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Israel.
The border with Egypt
Then, because these things are everywhere (like Chuck Norris(duh duh duuuuh)), an ice cream truck showed up at our lunch stop in the middle of the desert.
After we had our fill of good ice cream, we began our descent towards Eilat. I don’t want to go into too much detail, but it was about 5 miles of downhill (more like downmountain though), and the views of the twin cities of Aqaba and Eilat were stunning. When everybody had gathered at the bottom of the hill, we said a few prayers for the man who crashed on the downhill and had to go to the hospital, and started our “victory ride” through Eilat to get to the beach. When we got there and everybody finished cheering, I jumped right into the water and went snorkeling. The colors of the fish were spectacular, and even when I was standing in 4 inches of water, there were schools of fish swimming around my feet. We had a celebratory dinner at the hotel, and then a few people(including me) made short speeches. We watched a slideshow of the pictures taken by the official photographers(I will try to get it on the website for you to see when I get a copy of it), and with a last blow of the shofar, the 2010 Israel Ride was over.
P.S. More pics later it just takes a long time to load the pics
Gabe
