Bike
into History:
The Backroads of Israel
by Myron "riverman" Buck
Yesterday, my boss (bless his soul) tossed me the keys to his 1984 CX500 Custom and said "Take a ride". He didn't have to ask twice.
It being about 90 degrees out and very humid, I considered riding without armour, but I also considered that I had not ridden in over a year, so I compromised by putting on my riding boots (cowboy leathers) and heavyweight jacket, but omitting the chaps. I have to wear a helmet, as the law here in Israel is pretty clear (you don't need a license to ride a scooter, but you must wear a helmet. Interesting.) For good measure, and having learned my lesson from a mountain bike crash several years ago, I wore my leather gloves. After a 20 foot skid on gravel, I learned that I'd wear those suckers even if I were riding naked!
I checked the oil, coolant, tires, lights. The idle was set too low, and he had it on perpetual partial choke, so I fixed that, gave the bike a quick shine, and headed off eastward out of the 'urban strip' into the rolling hills of the West Bank. First, I headed eastward through Ra'anana (just north of Tel Aviv and the beach were Jonah was eaten by the whale) into the town of Kfar Saba. The roads are major intratown highways with lots of stop and go traffic. Instantly, I remembered that idiot cagers are NOT an American phenomenon, and had several close calls. Since licensing is not a requirement, most cages expect bikers to be bad drivers, and lane-splitting, illegal passing (between oncoming cars) and curb-hopping are the norm. So most cars didn't know how to deal with a biker who actually keeps his lane, uses turn signals, yields rights-of-way, etc. I figured that neither of us were going to compromise our standards, so the sooner I got out of the traffic zone, the better.
I headed eastward into the hills, and traffic died off instantly. Almost every local is actually afraid of going into the Occupied Territories with their Israeli plates, so as soon as I went through the police barriers, I had the road to myself. I went from a bit trepidatious to lighthearted to elated as the narrow lane began to wind its way up into the Jerusalem hills, hairpinning and weaving through valleys rimmed with cliffs and old Crusader and Biblical ruins. Every turn of the narrow roads exposed burial tombs from pre-Christian eras, rock quarries from the Crusader and Ottoman times, or just miles of vistas of open rolling hills. Perfect.
The occasional Palestinian village initially caused me some worry, as stories of rock-throwing and hostility are not completely unfounded. But I was reminded instantly that BIKES are not cars: everyone waves and smiles when you come through a small town on a bike. I stopped at a small Arab shop and had a coke with the owner, speaking in my Pidgeon Arab and Hebrew, him in his Pidgeon English. Instantly, all the neighborhood kids were standing around watching, pointing at the bike, venturing up to say "Hello, how are you?" in a manner that would have made their Language teachers proud.
The only visual downside to this trip came whenever I exited one of these small Palestinian villages nestled peacefully in a quiet valley, simple houses covered with flowers, and small shops spread randomly about the village, and I would encounter an Israeli 'Settlement': a barricaded and barbed-wire rimmed development of mass-produced concrete and glass houses, all lined up and identical, with a massive and ominous presence. The effect was like coming out of the rural countryside and seeing a huge factory or industrial Mall being built in the middle of the landscape. The 'settlers' deliberately choose hilltops for their towns in order to maximize the visual effect of their presence, and it works. The deliberate and offensive discrepancy between the Palestinian and Settler houses was a real turn-off from the overall pleasantness of the ride.
The one near-disaster came as I was circumnavigating one of these ugly 'settlements'. I was making every effort to stay on the local roads, built and maintained by the Palestinian Authority (PA) because they were more fun and scenic than the modern straight empty highways which connect the settlements. I encountered an Israeli patrol and asked for the back way into Ramalla and Jerusalem, and they directed me up a one-lane windy road that climbed a nearby cliffside to a hilltop village. As I approached the village, the road had 2 switchbacks, making a wonderful tight S-turn halfway up it's climb along the cliff.
I entered the first, right-hand turn quite close to the shoulder, and, as the road was empty, I smoothly cut to the inside of the left-hand curve where it was the steepest, and gave a little gas. Instantly, the bike was DOWN and skidded to a stop right in the center of the curve! Fortunately, I had only been going about 10 mph, but I was astounded at how instantly I had gone down! It was laying with the wheels uphill, and when I went to lift it up, I realized why she had gone over on me so quickly: years of leaky old cars riding their brakes through those hairpins had left the road as slick as ice along the inside of the corner, and I could hardly stand up with my smooth-soled boots. The gas dribbling out of the tank and the inverted nature of the bike didn't help either. Add to this that I was just recovering from having back spasms (last week) as well as the fact that this was my first laydown ever and I had never had to stand a bike up like this before. It took a second to get a good hold of it, and once I got her sort of up on the wheels, I was able to let it roll around me until it was downhill of me and with the wheels lower than the engine, From this position, it was easy to get her rightside her up. The damage report was very minimal: the mirror/ clutch assembly had twisted out of line, so I loosened the screws and realigned that. The shifter had bent up, so I stood on that and bent it back straight. Other than that, the little rubber mounts on the turn signals had done their shock absorbing job, so there was no visual damage at all. Not even any scratches, although the engine guard did bend in against the radiator mounting bolts a little, but not enough to cause any problems.
The rest of the ride was without incident, but I suddenly lost my fearlessness of the twisties, (having felt how icy the corners were), and I found myself slowing waaaayyy down for every downhill corner and riding like a newbie. It was about an hour before I was finally relaxed enough to lean through the corners properly and get back to riding like a guy who has owned 5 bikes in the last 20 years!
I eventually made it to the outskirts of Jerusalem, where I hopped on the highway for a few miles. Reconsidering, I bailed at the next intersection and returned to the PA road system, winding back down from the hills to the Plains of Sharon (where King David kept his sheep) and made it back home by dusk. At the end of the day, I had ridden for 8 hours, put about 400 km on the bike, and had managed to explore a small corner of the country were no Israelis but the patrols go. I got to feel the wind in my face again, ride on roads that see 10 cars a day, and learned a few new things about lowsiding.
It was a good day.
Riverman occasionally pops up from the desert sands to bring us more adventures in boats and bikes and other moving things.
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