Lately, I seem to be doing a lot of getting _almost_ somewhere on my bicycle. The pic above (courtesy of Minna!) is the view from the latest place I almost got to -- מבשרת ציון/ Mevesaret Tzion, a neighborhood on the outskirts of Jerusalem where Minna and her classmates here ' were having a meeting.Actually, I did make it to Mevesaret Tzion, just not quite all the way where they were meeting in Mevesaret Tzion -- it was just too much climbing for me and my little bicycle! It's about 780 meters above sea level where they were meeting. That's not too much higher than Minna's apartment (and the round-trip distance was only about 20 kilometers), but the route that I took plunged down to only about 560 meters in the middle, so there was a lot of climbing back up on the way there and back! A very challenging ride for me, but it was really worth it. The route took me through the Jerusalem Forest. It was really beautiful. It was hot and sunny, but I had seven liters of water with me and some nuts and dried fruit, so I wasn't lacking for fluids or fuel.
What I _was_ lacking at one point was a way out of the forest! On my way back home, I decided to take this one path that paralleled the road through the forest I had taken on the way there. I assumed the path exited the forest to a road somewhere. It didn't. There was a big fence between me and the road. I ended up having to drag the bike up this steep path to get through this one place where someone had tampered with the fence so one could get through to the road:
These pics are of the highest point I got to in Mevaseret Tzion:
And here is the bike when I was taking a rest at the entrance to Mevesaret Tzion:
And this of course is me (albeit a blurry version) at the same rest stop.
It was a great ride!Here's the route:
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