Only 35 miles today -- but all uphill!

Albert Einstein is said to have explained the theory of relatively as follows: "When a pretty girl is sitting on your lap, an hour feels like a minute; when you are sitting on top of a hot stove, a minute feels like an hour."

When you are biking along the Mediterranean coast with the wind at your back, a mile seems like a foot. When you are climbing a hill that never seems to end, a foot feels like a mile. I was concerned about the ride today because of the climb (we climbed over 2400 feet over two days of riding), but I got some great advice from Joel Roffman back home and a man named John Drill here that proved invaluable.

We stopped to see the grave of David Ben Gurion, Israel's first Prime Minister. At the end of his life, he came to live and work at a kibbutz on the Negev desert.

We are now spending Shabbat in the small desert town of Mitzpeh Ramon, which is at the top of the Ramon Crater (not really a crater, you can read about that here.

Today was the one day when I joined the lower group, "Shomrim." The difference in our routes was that we did not go on an off-road mountain biking optional excursion. I declined this opportunity for three reasons (1) My overseas health insurance doesn't cover extreme sports -- including (but not limited to) mountain biking; (2) I have a history of falling from bikes (Mountain bikes in particular, and in the Negev desert specifically!); and (3) I want to enjoy this ride and not spend the last two days cut up.

Wishing everybody a Shabbat Shalom.