I just spent a week riding through mud.

Not the kind of nice warm Dead Sea mud that tourists buy. I’m talking about freezing cold mud. It gets on your arms, your legs, in your nose, and between your teeth. Every day after the ride you take a shower wearing your riding gear to try and get some of it off. But it’s just not possible.

The mud gets on your bike chain and in your gears. It gets in your brakes and clogs your pedals. Your bike weighs a ton no matter how often you try and clean some muck off.

What an amazing week.

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Finally.

Team Neve Daniel has trained as much as we can and raised the money for our sponsorships for Alyn. For everyone who sponsored us, thank you.

The weather report for the next week is grim. The Golan is expected to be cold, rainy, and muddy. Now anyone who seriously rides a bike has gotten caught in the rain more than once. A cold rain can make a ride quite difficult and uncomfortable. Basically, when it starts to come down and the trails turn to mud, there are only two ways to look at the situation:

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Last week, my family had a bit of a crisis. Our beloved dog Bailey swallowed something that was never meant to be swallowed, and it tore up her belly and intestines.

She spent a week and a half in the vet clinic in Maale Adumim where she underwent two major operations. At one point, the vet told us that the odds were heavily against her making it home.

Those who are not pet owners are forgiven for not comprehending how torn apart a family can be when a pet is near death’s door. All of us went to bed on Rosh Hashana crying, wondering if we would see our Bailey again.

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Tuesday morning, LBD and I did our usual Monday morning ride. We ride down Derech Avot, past Eretz Ayalim, and the real fun stuff starts near Gavna. It is a long technical descent down around the hills past Bat Ayin Bet. Then comes a hellish wonderfully challenging ride back to the top. For a few kilometers you are climbing steeply through a narrow valley that seems to go on forever. By the end, your heart beats through your jersey and your lungs are on fire. No matter how many times I have ridden it, I always question my sanity while doing the climb.

A better time to question sanity is actually on the downhill. At the beginning is a very steep paved 100 meter concrete descent. That gets your speed up. After that it’s a white knuckles — hold onto your bike and pray like it’s Yom Kippur – ride down a trail full of twists, turns, rocks and ditches.

My goal is always to keep up with LBD who is the club’s hands down specialist when it comes to technical descents flinging bike and rider off a cliff.

We were going on a very fast clip when I realized I was drifting off a bit to the left of the trail. I had lost concentration for a split second — a big “no-no” when riding fast down rocks. I tried to slow down a bit and leaned to my right to edge back to the center of the trail when…

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Today we took some new riders to the club on a single track ride. For those who are not familiar with the term “single track,” it refers to an off-road bike path that is only wide enough for a single bike to go through at any one time. Single tracks are usually filled with twists and turns, jumps and drops, and lots of rocks.

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