Desert Rider

פורסם בתאריך על ידי

Just returned from Mitzpe-Ramon, where I participated in "The Celebration" – a body-arts festival – in which I enjoyed quite a success, mostly for the main similarity between me and the engrgizer bunny – we both never shut up.
I enjoyed it immensly – except, maybe, for the part when I was trying to sleep, in a sleeping bag outside, and was woken up once every two minutes by a live goddamned pet rooster – but this is not the point.
The point is – I rode Sleeper, my motorbike, the whole way. There and Back Again. Mitzpe-Ramon, I'll have you know, is about 70 kilometers of road away from Beer-Sheva, which is, in turn, about 130 kilometers from Tel Aviv. However, the latter 130 are rather easy, while the 70 are full of turns and twists, and unexpected crossroads, and more turns, which are really dangerous because the road descends towards the deep desert, and a beautiful but distracting view. And the occasional camel.
Sleeper was magnificent. Not a single complaint. Event when the fuel ran out. This happened a kilometer or two before Beer-Sheva, but I, having boldly turned the fuel-switch to "reserve tank", managed to squeeze them out of the faithful sleeper with, as stated above, no hard feelings.
The problem with the way back was that the abovementioned 70 now became ascending. This was no problem for Sleeper, but various cars showed a tendency to slow down and block the one-lane road. Sleeper and I, however, left them far behind.
And Sleeper rests, in his usual parking space at home, and I rest too, disturbed only by the fact that every muscle in my ass is crying like that bloody rooster, and I can hardly sit.

13 תגובות בנושא “Desert Rider”

  1. Bah. You should hear my father's stories about his cross-Argentina moped-journey.
    Yes, I said moped. Not motorcycle. Moped. קטנוע.

    Well, actually, you shouldn't. I hear them and that's enough.

  2. Sounds like fun.
    NOT.
    A mopen? ouch. I'm entertaining the idea of travelling abroad sometime and renting a touring bike for a serous trip sometime in the future.
    South America – maybe down the coast of Chile or something.
    Hell, Europe could also be fun.

  3. Sounds like you had a smashing time.
    Me, however, I spent the night in Tel Aviv, and headed north today and visited some friends in Moshav Tnuvot, and he owns a nice new BMW R1200RT – seriously beautiful.
    Took Highway 6 back to Tel Aviv, now THAT's a nice ride.

  5. Exactly.
    I was with my parents in Argentina in 1985 (my one and only trip abroad, ever, not counting the time we made Aliya – we came by boat! – but I was too young to remember anyway), and we traveled around Argentina by nice, modern busses, and it was too goddamn long. That's one fucking big country, and we only traveled its north part.
    Well, actually once we traveled by train. The trains in Argentina are not, um, very well maintained. They span large areas of open country, serve mostly poor population and are rather rickety – cars and rails alike. To the day I've no idea how come it didn't get derailed – it did stop quite often, though I've no idea whether to let cows pass or so the engineer could get off it and straighten the rails where they were got detached ahead of the train. And it was also FREEZING cold, ’cause there was no heating. That was one LONG night.
    Still, I wouldn't have chosen the moped option.

  6. Coo, man.
    Never been to 6 in my life. The idea of paying extra money for an extra road doesn't do well with me. I stay with the free-(ach, double meaning!)-way.

  7. Hey, my life philosophy allows for paying money for the nice and easy.
    It was nice, and it was easy.
    So I paid.
    Let's try it together sometime for a long stretch of road.
    On me.
    You'll be hooked. 🙂

  9. Ach, the picture of you riding Mike along highway 6 has so many merits… 😛

    (Sorry, still laughing, for the past five minutes.)

  13. Road 6 really isn't for motorcyctles.
    Road 6 is for cars who whish to avoid traffic jams.
    I, for instance, use this road regularly to go to Kiryat Ata.
    True, it costs money (~14 shekel for the whole strech of the road if you have PasKal subscription).
    But it shortens the time one has to drive by 30 minutes (traffic jams excluded).
    And eveybody knows that Time=Money

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