My family and I took a long weekend vacation at Kibbutz Ein-Gev on the eastern side of the Sea of Galilea just below the Golan Heights this weekend. Of course I brough my KH24 along!In Israel the weekend consists of Friday and Saturday. We arrived Thursday evening and chilled in the Sea of Galilea (The lake where Jesus walked on the water.) with the kids and had a nice dinner of St. Peters fish. My rides took place on Fraiday and Saturday
mornings. Very early in order to try and avoid the heat. I usually don’t ride alone for the following reasons:
- If I get hurt I have no one to help me.
- When I land something big there is no one who sees it and appreciates it.
- There is no one to do funny UPDs to laugh at. (UPDs are aways funny when someone else does them and they are not hurt seriously.)
However, since I could not find any riding partners and the Golan heights are such a magnificant area I was forced to ride alone.
On Friday June 15th I woke up at 5am and rode the car 7km south to Kibbutz Ha’on. (Kind of funny but Ha’on in modern Hebrew means male verility! I am sure that it has a second meaning in the bible.) At Kibbutz Ha’on I turned east on a tractor road through the bannanaorchards to the shrine of the Turkis Pilots. It is a nice shrine made by Turkey to commemorate two pilots that died when thier plane crashed at this very spot in 1914 in the beggining of WWI. They were flying from Istanbul to Cairo. Quite a feat for the time.
It seams that they were unaware of the very strong crosswinds off the cliffs of the Golan Heights. I parked my car here and took the MUni out. From this very spot I started taking a rough dirt road up the cliffs. This place
is called Mavo Hama. It is actually one of the lowest parts of the Golan Heights and was therefore one of the places where Israel chose to charge up against the Syrian Army in the Six Day War. The dirt road did not go strait up the cliffs but slowly ascended. My legs were burning and I felt empathy for the Israeli soldiers who had to run up this place, with all thier gear, 40 years ago almost to the day! After about 4Km I reached a single trail that diverged from the rough dirt road and led into one to the ravines. It was now
almost 8am and burning hot. I rode this in to Ein Sheyuch. A spring that bubbles out of the cliff wall. On the way I met the caretaker. He is a 70 something year old man from Kibbutz Ha’on who cleans the pool where the spring water gathers and takes care of the Fig trees, Grape vines and cleans the place. He does all this voluntarily! He saw me riding my KH24 and said “I have never seen anything so crazy in my life!” “I have come here in the morning to stumble upon sex parties, Families skinny dipping, and other weird stuff but never a Unicycle over this rugged terrain!” Well, I got to the pool and enjoyed a 20 minute swimm in the cold water. Very refreshing after the tough climb up. After the swim and redressing I took a single trail down instead of the dirt road. The single trail was created mostly byhorse back riders but I did see mountain bike tracks on it too. It was not a very hard single.There were not to many drops, no big ones but it was very steep and gravely. I had to fight very hard to keep in control on the steep decents. ( I took the bake off my KH24. I keep a brake on my KH29.) On the way down I ran into the old Syrian trech system. Kind of hard to believe that people ran around dying in those trenches 40 years ago and now I am having the time of my life MUniing the same area. Sometimes things do get better! It took me
almost 3 hours to climb the heights but only about 30 minutes to get down. It was now 9am and my wife and kids were still asleep so I rode to the lake shore and did some trials on the promenade and boat docks. (Kind of funny but my kids never sleep so late when I sleep in!) I then sat down at a nice Cafe right over the water and had a cofee and ice cream cone in the nice lake beeze. More to come on the following day’s ride to the ancient city of Susita!
Unicorn
Keep in mind that all of the pictures were taken with the self timer and the camera was balanced on some kind of rock or tree branch.
In the pictures we see the Turkish Aviators Shrine, a sign warning of mines, the single trail down, the spring where I took a coolo off swim and coffee on the shores of the Lake of Galilea.
