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Hootie In Israel - Part 1 |
After having ended a solid 07 season, I got the chance (early November) to kick it with the ‘Ride Guide’ for a super packed schedule in Israel. I have been trying to get to the holy land for bike park business for 3 years and now this opportunity opened up so I jumped at it like a frog on crack. This trip included Mislav (Rider), Darcy (Host/Rider), Cory (Filmer) and myself (Rider) hooking up with a Tourism Israel guide who would get us around safe and sound while in the holy land.
Jamie from Norco and Jay from John Henry pushed hard to get my 08 six ready and thursday morning I flew early out of Vancouver and met up with Cory and Darcy 5 hours later in Tdot (Toronto), only to jump a long haul flight (12 hours) to Tel Aviv that was so crammed my carry on had to be under the seat in front of me.
I have put a lot of thought into how I would write/edit this article and after some serious considerations I have decided to leave it loose edit, blog style in hopes of keeping context on how amazing this trip ended up. So without further ado the un spell checked daily blog of my Dreaded trip of a life time to Israel.
Darcy arrives safe and sound
November 6, Friday.
I am here at The Dead Sea! 400m below sea level the lowest natural place on
earth… HOLY crap it’s unbelievable! The scenery, the hotel
the people…
Travel was retarded long, 5 hours to Tdot, 2 hour lay over, 12 hour flight to Tel Aviv to meet up with Mislav and then a 2 hour drive with ‘Guy’ our driver thru West Jerusalem to get here. We went straight to the event site of the Volvo Challenge met Ofrah our tourism host, Nimi and Boaz the event organizers and then scoped out the beach event area where they have a single dirt jump set up for their EXTREME show!!!
Are you ready for the EXTREME show?
We have been invited to do jump demos with the local riders, the best jumpers invited from all over Israel. We then made it to the Meridian hotel where I raced to get my bike built, shit, showered and shaved 20 hours of travel off and had dinner just in time to make the evening Cocktail Party to kick the event off…
Cocktails anyone?
Earlier in the day we saw this crazy dude riding this old heavy steel bike
going somewhere, as it turns out we met Daisuke (http://www.daisukebike.be/)
at the party! It seems Israel is his 101st country he has ridden to and
has about 40 more to go. That’s roughly 120 000km. Event organizers
introduced themselves to him on the road and when they found out about his
trip they invited him to the party.
I love this sport!
I think I slept 20 minutes on the plane and maybe got another 20 min while
waiting for people getting organized so we split the party around 11pm and
headed back to get some sleep… Seems that Cory and I were the holdouts,
Darcy and Mislav are long gone and tucked in. Yikes I am exhausted.
November 7, Saturday morning
My lack of Hebrew has resulted in my purchased internet not being what I expected so I ended up paying to receive email last night but now have to wait to send anything until I purchase more time! DOH! What a luxury having internet service. After having a HUGE buffet breakfast I am just a few minutes from splitting to go to the event. I had some time to check out the Meridian hotel and man this place rocks! Very upscale with fantastic amenities and food. The rooms are spacious and very modern with a view to die for.
The view from our hotel.
Mislav, Darcy and myself will be putting on jump shows throughout the day (beachside) with the local rippers for the event and hopefully drinking lots of water, it’s freekin hot…Can’t imagine what summer must be like…
"Man this place rocks!"
Dirt jumping on the Norco Six
Mislav went crazy and threw every trick known to mankind technically sound with huge amplitude!
Mislav putting on a clinic
Darcy rode awesome and is the first girl ever in Israel to do an Extreme show. Yeah girl!
Darcy - the first woman to get Extreme in Israel
The other riders we sessioned with were all invited and are the best jumpers in all of Israel! They were really easy going and fun to ride with and they were really solid riders. It was awesome to just show up cold with no practice and rip with stoked locals, it made all the difference…
The locals were super laid back.
While we were there we made so many new friends!
Swimming in the Dead Sea is dead easy.
11 times more salt than the Atlantic Ocean!!! It was awesome just floating along worry free just kicking back, you could pack a picnic and lay it on your belly and float wherever you wanted… The downside was getting sea salt in my eye but not so bad… This experience is truly a top life experience…
After getting out of the water we all filmed interviews for Ride Guide on the day’s events at a local café when I noticed a grommy slayer busting stair gaps and doing wheelies stoked to be on his bike. I got my interview done quick and my new unnamed friend and I sessioned the stairs and urban area. He was so stoked on new angles on creative riding, it was sooo cool to just pick stuff to ride on and have fun with a kid who did not know a word of English…
My new friend.
We have been spending some time now with our new full time guide Chaim Rockman
who seems to be cool but a shake tough to figure out, and to complicate matters
Tourism Israel want us only on singletrack and historical sites but local riders
here only want us on sick trails… I want to do both so hopefully everyone
will get along. I think it is all just a lot of people talking around
a lot of policy (mainly liability) but if we just stick to our guns and be
real honest to goodness freeriders I think we can make it all happen easy.
I am safe, well fed, exercised and a calm assertive leader. ;)
November 11, Sunday
Got up at 7:30, another sweet breakfast spread!
gee what a sweet spread
Totally Veggie and the biggest morning buffet I have every seen in my life ever! Yeah Meridian!
Our limo awaits
We got all our gear together and split for Arad where we got water and then hit the local bike shop had Turkish coffee and hooked up with locals for some killer trail.
An Israeli bike shop
The shop was rad and the guys were super cool, while waiting we tried the surf bike and then went next door for some AWESOME pastry. The bakery doode was so cool and was stoked we came from Canada just to try his pastry. Judging by his smile I say he rather fancied Ms Turenne.
The Baker
Camels Represent.
The bike trail had sharp rock all over it and it was hard to discern where it became loose and where it would tack up so just about every turn was a surprise. Strangely enough we found snail shells in the middle of the high desert and considering that the Dead Sea has no life and we were just a bunch of MTB freeks we were all shocked and amazed!
Near the end of the trail I popped a mini rock face and got side drafted with the craziest of winds which resulted in a one knee dragger (thank goodness for armour) and double flatted tires. I wasn’t sure how far Cory from Ride Guide was filming to so I sent it down this nasty finishing hill both tires flat surfing desert sand the whole way… YeeehaW!
We finished the trail and went back to the bike shop to pick up tubes and promptly left for Jerusalem. Just before we hit the main highway we stopped at this crazy cool little restaurant on the Dead Sea overlooking the lights of Jordan. Our server and menus both could not speak English so we relied on our Chaim to give us the goods. Our food choices were awesome and we ate some frickin fantastic food!!! Believe it or not it actually started raining in the desert! We were eating in a semi covered patio but rain didn’t seem to matter to any of us… We finished up, got situated in the van and on route we hit a crazy traffic jam from a head on bus truck accident which left 4 people dead and us in traffic for 2 hours!
The Crash Zone
Once thru we punched it to the Judean Hills, Ma’ale Ha’chamisha Kibbutz where everyone kicked back or went to bed. I am still up fixing my flats, cleaning my bike and writing this…. I hate hotels that won’t let you bring bikes into the room…
November 12, Monday
Got up at 5:30am to get into east Jerusalem to street ride before the shops all opened and people came to the markets. Jerusalem is dirty and you can go down alleys in the morning and see bones from animals cut up from the butcher cast on the street and litter everywhere. The shop keepers were really cool and everyone we ran into from shop keeps to kids were super stoked on the way we were riding bikes.
It seems no one here has ever seen a bike bunny hop much less a manual. Who would have thought to do big juicy skids on a bike??? The kids eyes were bulging out of their heads! After some time filming down in the under building corridors we rode next to some construction workers who were pumped! Man they were soo stoked on us just riding down stairs!
Riding down stairs made you a star in Israel
Ryan Leech would rock this place.
Mislav getting arty with a fufanu
Hootie doing his impression of a table
Mislav Nosepick while Cory points the camera
We left the roof top ditched bikes and went walking tourist styles. Man! I learned so much. I did not understand how complicated things are here, but I am gaining more and more knowledge. Many of my beliefs originally formed from my rigid Baptist bible school as a little kid are out the window and I have more awareness between belief and actual history.
Mislav and Darcy easing security concerns
Mislav and Darcy made some new dance friends, smacking it low and crazy with security cell phone music just before getting searched!
Ever ridden in Israel or even been there? Any thing to say? Here's the place.
