The meaning of life

Yep, this is it, folks. From the legendary Carl Sagan himself. This is what I want played at my funeral...

Photos from the Jordan Valley bike ride 2009

Here's a link to some of the photos from the ride. I'll try to smarten this up a bit as time goes on, to give some context.

Jen & Jim made it!

Congratulations to our oldest and youngest members - Grandfather & Granddaughter Jen & Jim. Here they are in Nazareth, with Elia, the head of our welcoming party.

Galilean twilight

Crossing from Ein Gev to Ginosar.

The true horror of that Day 2 event...

Here's the map:


There's also a direct link to the GPS (which will hopefully remain available for a while). Thanks, GPSVISUALIZER.COM!

OK, Tango and Cash...

See if you can top THAT! The GPS is a bit inaccurate on this; it cut out before we reached our destination, and we lost a bit at the start. Total distance ~110km. See that climb between ~66 and 92km on the graph? That's 1325m, from the floor of the Jordan Valley to the pass leading to Jerash.

Now, Tango and Cash think that they're tough chappies - anything like that on the Trans-Alp, lads? ;-)

Needless to say, we were pleased to see our hotel in the end...

Arrival in Nazareth

It has been gruelling. At times it has been scary. Always it has been exhilaratng. And now we have arrived! Nazareth has changed since I was here, but much remains the same. More later. Bike has gone back to Jerusalem. Just legs from now on.

We got a fantastic welcome from the School of Nursing and the staff of the hospital - plus the local Nazareth Scouts Brass Band. Thanks folks!

WiFi outage

Dearie me - lack of posts due to diffs scoring hotspots.
Update on journey so far - after detaching mule, we skidded down to the dead sea. Next day, a MURDEROUS cycle to Jerash. 110km, the last 30 of which climbed from -400 to +1200m in 30km. Only 6 of made it.

Today, on to Nazareth!

and to prove it...

here's a mule stuck to my chest...

...or me stuck to a mule's bum. Whichever...

Hi from Jordan!

Isn't a free wifi hotspot a brilliant thing? Here I am, by the shores of the Dead Sea, and I can post on my blog! Yippee!

Well, we Nazareth cyclists put in a good, if brief, day's cycling from Madaba to the Dead Sea. There are 18 of us, ranging in age from 16 to 71. Wide range, and I hope we all make it. The Jordanian people are of course lovely, and we're being very well looked after.

Took a dip in the Dead Sea - very choppy today, utterly filthy, of course, in a (hopefully) sterile kind of way. The scenery on the way down was amazing, but very poor visibility due to high winds and dust in the air.

Tomorrow is another matter - a long day ahead to Jerash. Thanks for the sponsorship - http://justgiving.com/shanemckee