Once again, we got up at 5 am to begin our cycling for the morning. It’s great to be able to put in a good ride before 11am as it gives us a long day ahead for touring and relaxing.
This morning we started from our home base at 6 am after another breakfast of peanut butter and jam. It’s basically enough to keep us fueled for our riding as long as we have granola bars,energy drink and gels during the ride. This was going to be a tough bike ride around the upper western shores of the Kinneret. There is a tricky technical descent near the start that goes for almost 8 km and because we would return the same way you guessed it.. a tough climb (over 500 m vertical total) However, Naomi and Ann were up to the challenge. John and I planned a challenging 500 metre ascent over 12 km up a mountain road - an offshoot of the planned bike route. Naomi and Ann would continue on the flat section heading towards Tiberias for about 15 km and John and I would do the climb and return back down hoping to hook up with to girls for the return climb to Verid HaGalil.
When John and I got to the top of our climb, we called the girls on our cell phone, only to find out that Ann had flatted about 5 km from where we left them and they could not change the inner tube. It had taken us about 45 minutes to climb to the top but only took 14 minutes to return to the bottom. John wasn’t happy about having a delay to go get the girls and possibly miss his pancake breakfast (the resort serves breakfast from 8 am until 11). However we reached the girls in no time, changed the inner tube and got us all rolling again.I led the group back until we reached the climb when Naomi began to slow considerably. She just needed to go at her own pace. She told me to go ahead and get the van if she couldn’t get back up. I chugged up what seemed like endless climbs under a very hot sun, but got back in good time - I was tired, sweaty and shaky. But I had instructions from BJ to go to the dining room and make sure that we would get our pancakes and eggs after I retrieved our group. I changed my bike shoes for sandals and was just about to get the van when John and Ann returned and then Naomi just a few minutes later! They did amazing!
After a quick shower, mostly more to cool my body down I hustled to the dining room, followed closely by Naomi - BJ and Ann were already there. We were so hungry and thirsty, that we kept shoving food into our mouths and guzzling water, grapefruit drink and chocolate milk.
We had time for a short catnap before we had to pack up, check out and depart for our next destination – Hagoshrim in the Golan (not more than a hour away).
More about that next entry.
