(I'm going to skip the whole apology for the stale blog thing and just mention that this is a post for Shiori's mom)

So I was back home a year ago in the mountainous and forested wilds of the land of Canadia, breathing the fresh air and frolicking in alpine meadows and trying to think how I could bring a bit of this freedom and outdoor bliss back to Haifa with me.
Of course, the obvious answer was to spend an obscene amount of money on a bicycle and then leave it in my flat while I spent long hours surfing the web in my underground office. ahem.

Part of the problem was that my two wheel preferences run towards the off-road end of the spectrum, as riding on pavement is a really good way to bore yourself into a coma and/or get hit by a bus. And Haifa, being a city, doesn't offer much in the way of dirt. Not that's accessable from my house anyway.

Well, the other day I finally wheeled my bike out of my room, down the stairs and into the street. I sat there for a moment trying to figure out what to do. I had gotten my hands on a map that promised trails down the mountain side not too far away. I hadn't had much luck with the trails in Haifa so far, so I was facing a long ride up bus filled roads for an uncertain payoff.

But I turned my bike uphill and started pedaling. Up the winding roads of Haifa with the cars and the buses and whatnot. I finally got up to the spot that was supposed to be the trailhead, but found nothing but houses. I rode around a bit looking for a gap in a fence or a sign or something but really wasn't getting anywhere and was just about to give up when I noticed a patch of dirt far below, off a street farther down the mountain.

Suddenly energized, I raced down to investigate. And there, on the side of mount Carmel, I found a hint, a little wisp of a trail, turned my wheels toward it and dove in.

Now, as a little aside, I offer this brief history of Mt Carmel that I heard from a gardener who lives here:
Back in day this was a green, lush mountainside covered in trees and grass and little bushes and other planty things. Then the romans came along and started to chop down the trees to build houses. chop chop chop. And as the trees fell, their grip on the soil loosened and it started to get washed down the mountain. That carried on for a while, and the romans did their thing (roamin'?) and the mountian was still pretty lush and green, just not as much as it was. Then they built a railway that passed along the foot of the mountain and the engines, in that quiant 19th century way, were wood fired. And there went the rest of the trees. So now, the mountain is a big pile of rocks with a handful of trees hanging on for dear life. So you can only imagine what the riding is like here.

When I dropped off the paved road, it was into a shallow gully of rocks about the size and shape of babies heads (known throughout the mountain biking world as "baby heads"). I kept thinking that I would come over a rise to find a smooth and rolling dirt road, but it just didn't happen. The only brief respite I had was when broad patches of solid rock cut across the ditch I was riding in. But even then these solid swathes served mostly as ramps to lift me above the rocky mess for a moment before letting me drop back into the rough. And it just went on and on and on. Like riding a jackhammer down a flight of stairs. And I couldn't wait to do it again.