28 Hours, 739 Miles, A Full Circle of Israel

Israel, from Eilat to Golan

On Friday morning, November 1, I got up at 4:30 am in Paris and began a long day of travel that ended on the beach in Eilat, Israel.  The usually fast train ride direct from Luxembourg station to the airport was twice as long because of track work, two trains, then a bus. 

But after a long walk and the extra security checks that come with flying to Israel, I boarded a full 737 for the 4-hour flight to Tel Aviv. I knew before I left America with a swollen knee, I would not be able to ride the 300-plus mile distance from Eilat to Golan, so I decided to see the whole country in a 739-mile circle that started as soon as I cleared customs and picked up my Hyundai rental car. 

By 4pm I was driving the first of 200-plus miles to the southernmost city in Israel: Eilat. I got a hotel two blocks from the beach that was the cheapest hotel in the city. All the signage in the hotel was in Russian and Hebrew. I might have been the only guest who was not from Russia.  The city was alive with party music till well past 4am, but I fell asleep early after the long travel day.

At 7 this morning I got up and walked to the beach. There was a roped off area with several swimmers doing "laps" swimming back and forth between the ropes marking the swimming area. As soon as I started swimming and tasted salt water, I realized this was the first time I swam in the ocean. I had played on the beach when I was a kid and with my kids, but I never actually swam.  It felt great. And the water was so clear I could watch the fish swimming underneath me. 

After the swim, I showered and drove north, all the way north to the Mount Bental observation post, part of one of the greatest tank battles in Israeli military history.  Just 160 Israeli tanks stopped 1,500 invading Syrian tanks. After the battle just seven Israeli tanks were still in operation and most of the crew members were killed or wounded.  The Syrians lost 900 tanks and suffered thousands of casualties. 

From that scene of violent battle, I drove back to the south to Tiberias on the Sea of Gallilee.  On the way to Tiberias on the northwest shore of the sea is the Mount of Beatitudes monastery, the site, according to tradition, of the Sermon on the Mount: a memorial to peace just an hour away from a memorial of armored warfare. 

On the drive north I traveled along the eastern border of Israel including the entire length of the Dead Sea. So going back to Jerusalem, I drove near the Mediterranean coast.  For the rest of the week I will take shorter rides near Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and places in between.   

The Beach in Eilat, Israel

Paris Training Race and West Along the Seine

Today I am back in Paris and riding longer distances getting ready for Israel. I rode 42 miles from the south side of Paris to the daily training race at l'hippodrome in the southwest of corner of Paris.

After an 8-mile warmup ride, I joined the with a small group going about 18mph. A half-lap later a faster group went by so I sped up and joined.  At the end of that lap, six guys went by going even faster, so I sprinted onto the end of that group that was averaging 22mph.

I stayed with them for three laps.  I was using Strava so riding with this fast group meant I set a half dozen personal records, and I moved up to 9,500th of 19,500 riders who set times on the two-mile oval.  I also moved up to 43rd among the 140 riders who set times in the 65-69 age group.

After five laps I turned off and made a tour of my favorite towns west of Paris. I rode up and over Mont Valerian through the town of Suresne. I used to stay there when I was in Paris on business 20 years ago because I could wake up early, roll down the hill and ride the daily training race.

After Suresne, I rolled down the long hill into Rueil-Malmaison. The company I worked for had an office there. It's a lovely town on a bend in the Seine.  After that I rode west along the Seine to Saint Germain-en-Laye. This town has an amazing park and Hotel d'Ville and is the setting for the novel Paris in the Present Tense by Mark Helprin--my favorite book by one of my favorite authors.

I rode back through Chatou and stopped for lunch a Maison Fournaise. I'll write a separate post about that.  Paris is a lovely pace to ride.

Visiting the Bastogne War Museum and the City

A Sherman tank hit on the right side. Inside the tank there are holes and gouges in every surface and part.  The crew was cut to pieces when their own armor became projectiles that ricocheted around the turret and hull.

The Bastogne War Museum honors the soldiers who fought the last Nazi offensive to a standstill in the cold woods of Belgium and refused to surrender when surrounded.  On this 75th Anniversary year dozens of celebrations will mark significant moments in the battle, beginning in November and continuing into 2020. 

A complete list of all the events and photos are on the museum website here.

For me the tank in the photo above reminded me of the fate of so many tank soldiers. When armor piercing shells blow a hole in armor plate, the armor itself becomes the shrapnel that ricochets inside the tank, killing and maiming the crew. 

M45 Quadmount antiaircraft gun used by the American Army with variants like this one used in a ground installation or mounted on half tracks.

 The museum has a large display on the history of The Holocaust.

This Sherman tank with its bright US Star on the side led me to wonder if the German gunner who hit the tank above used the star as an aiming point.

The commander of the surrounded soldiers of Bastogne was asked to surrender by the attacking Germans.  His reply was "Nuts!" He became famous for that reply and holding out against the attackers.  On his Wikipedia page that commander is identified as General Anthony Clement "Nuts" McAuliffe. 

Tanks Painted in Protest? As long as it's not My Tank!

 A Sherman tank in front of the Bastogne War Museum 

painted by a street artist to honor victims of violence.

In front of the museum in Bastogne is a temporary display of art from the fall of the Berlin Wall--30 pieces of wall painted to commemorate freedom. An M4 Sherman tank in front of the museum was also repainted to remember the victims of war and violence around the world.  The other tanks on display in the museum are, of course, painted as they were during their wartime service.  

Seeing a Sherman repainted by a street artist in front of a war museum was jarring.  Should a war machine be repainted as an anti-war protest?

  

Soviet tanks repainted in rainbow and pink as 

anti-war protests.

I realized I did not mind seeing former Soviet tanks painted pink or with love symbols. The Soviet Army was my Cold War enemy. They lost. So defacing their tanks was okay.

But seeing the Sherman tank painted in protest made me uncomfortable. That was an American tank. 

Then I remembered the mixed feelings I had just a week ago when I saw American-built M60 tanks, the tanks I served on in the Cold War, rolling into Syria.  More than 2,000 of the 3,000 tanks fielded by the Turkish Army are M60s.  The tank I served on was part of the attack against the allies Trump abandoned.  I did not like seeing what could have been my old tank rolling across the desert in service to a dictator. 

And then I thought of why tanks are painted in protest and as monuments and memorials.  Tanks are used as targets or monuments or left to rust because they can't be recycled. Armor plate costs more to metal than the recovered metal is worth. So tanks can't be melted down to make Mack trucks or Mercedes road cars. 

Tanks are war machines.  It would be best if unneeded war machines could be reused peacefully, but since they can't they will be monuments or palettes for protest for centuries to come. Armor plate a foot or more thick won't rust away anytime soon. 

Belleau Wood: Soldiers and Marines Stop a Huge German Attack in 1918

I visited Belleau Wood in northeastern France, site of a battle unlike most of the terrible trench warfare of World War I. In Belleau Wood, newly arrived American Soldiers and Marines reinforced the allied armies against a new German attack. Hundreds of thousands of German soldiers were transferred to the west as Russia left the war to fall into revolution.  

At Belleau Wood the Americans first stopped the German assault then counterattacked, never stopping to dig trenches or retreat from the attacking army.   At one point, a French commander told the Americans to fall back and dig trenches.  A Marine captain said, "Retreat? Hell no. We just got here."  

The story of the battle is available form many sources.  I visited to see how the world heals itself from the horror of war.  Belleau Wood is beautiful.  The rolling wheat fields that surround it where so many Marines died in a direct assault in June of 1918 were fallow, long past harvest at the end of October a century  later.  The wood itself, splintered by millions of bullets and tens of thousands of rounds of artillery, are peaceful, carpeted with leaves and showing no signs of rage and death.  

The cannons that ring the monument to the Marines in a clearing in the wood are black, somber and as peaceful as the woods around them. On this trip I will visit battle sites and Holocaust sites to see how life goes on after slaughter.  Belleau Wood and the rolling farm country around it could hardly be more different than the temporary terror of 1918.  Moments of heroism and long years of peace are both part of the human condition: both very real and a very real paradox that both exist in the same place--though not at the same time.  

Bicycling in Paris: the Daily Training Race

One of the groups circling L'Hippodrome in Paris

On my first full day in Europe, and the only day in Paris before leaving for battlefields in eastern France and Belgium, I rode the daily training race in Paris.  Each day, year round, the two-mile perimeter road around l'Hippodrome, the horse racing track in southwest Paris, is closed to traffic from 10am till dark. 

Every day groups of cyclists ride the circle, most in groups, some by themselves.  The speeds vary from two guys in their 80s I saw on my second lap going about 10mph to the first group I rode in which was averaging 22 mph.  I stayed with that group for a couple of laps and joined a group we passed which was traveling about 2mph slower. 

The road around the horse racing track rises slightly on the east side and goes down through the turn to the west.  The road is fifty feet wide on sides of the oval, but narrows to fifteen feet on the turn at the south end and is just a six-foot wide path at the north end. 

When the pack is silent, it is clearly no different than any pack I have ridden in anywhere in the world. The following distances, the way people pass each other, and even the young kid who attacks the group racing ahead, only to get caught on the uphill stretch where there was a headwind, is the same in Philadelphia, Paris or Prague.  Between the wind and my inadequate skill in listening to spoken French, I did not catch much of the conversation, but no one speaks deeply in a fast-moving group of 20 riders. 

If the weather is good and my knee is still good, I hope to ride again in Paris near the end of the trip.

The grandstands of l'Hippodrome seen from the east side.

"You and Your Doctor are Crazy" says the Physical Therapist in the Next Seat

With 90 minutes to go in the overnight flight to Europe, I spoke to the passenger in the window seat as we ate breakfast before landing.  We had an empty seat between us and she had slept through most of the flight. I was jealous.

I asked about her trip. She said she leaves the country anytime she has enough time off to get away.  She has lived in Paris, speaks four languages--English, Spanish, French and Russian--and loves to be in Paris in every season.  This trip will also take her to Rome and Vienna. She grew up in Puerto Rico where she learned Spanish and English. She learned French and Russian in Paris.

We introduced ourselves. Her name was Ady. She asked where I was traveling. I told her about riding in Europe and Israel. That switched the conversation from travel and language to her day job as a physical therapist.  

"Wait," she said. "You just got a knee replacement and you're riding across Israel?" I protested that I got the knee replacement more than six months ago, to which she answered, "Right. Just got a knee replacement. The first year is the recovery period." I told her my physical therapists said most knee replacements go wrong from lack of exercise. She agreed that happens, but said the knee is the most delicate joint in the body, with no supporting socket joint. "It just hangs out there, waiting to be--overused." 

Ady said, "Not like you would take my advice anyway, but you might want to think about limiting your time on the bike."  I told her that the doctor at the Orthopedic Urgent Care last night, and the surgeon, and PTs all told me to "Listen to my body." So I planned to do that.

She burst into laughter and said, "You and your doctors are crazy. You don't tell someone like you to listen to their body. By the time you hear you body saying 'slow down' you are already way into injury." I could see that. 

She was right about me not listening to her. I rode the day after I arrived in the daily training ride around l'hippodrome in the southwest corner of Paris. I'll write about that soon.