Rocket Ride update

Here's the latest on the last few rocket rides:

10/2: I decided to join the ride as it went by house. No sense in getting up at 5:30am to be at Nyack at 8am so I can get dropped in Hackensack by 9:00am! So I rode out to New Clarkstown road and headed south to meet up with the ride near the Nanuet Mall. I got dropped up North (or, as they in Minneapolis, Up Nort) on Scratchup Road (a well deserved name) because the fellow I was following lost contact with the group. We rode back together.

11/6: This was the first winter ride of the year. The winter ride is shorter, and cuts back to Nyack through Orangeburg rather than going North to New City. Thankfully, it starts at 9am instead of 8am. Unfortunately, I was unaware of this. My friend Simcha from Monsey showed up, which was quite surprising. I felt like I was doing quite well, but then got a flat climbing out from Lake Tappan. Simcha stopped and helped me change the tire, then we rode back to Nyack.

11/13: I showed up at 9am, which was nice. I blew out climbing out from Lake Tappan, and got dropped on Rivervale Road.

11/20: This time, rather than riding down to Engelwood, then cutting through Orangeburg, we cut off the Engelwood section by riding through Demarest, but then completed the northern section from the summer ride. I got dropped on Scratchup, but managed to catch up with another fellow from the ride. We passed a couple other riders from the ride on the way back to Nyack. Simcha was along on the ride again, and got dropped earlier.

Here's the graph:

Here's the map:

"Peace" at any price?

..I see a frightening pattern here: the Democrats wanted us out of Vietnam, and never mind the genocide that followed. The Democrats want us out of Iraq and never mind that the Baathists will fill the vacuum and all Iraq will be screaming in pain except the murderers, who will exult — especially Osama bin Laden. Can it be that the Democrats really want to surrender to the same man who killed 3,000 civilians on 9/11 and laughed about it? Are we so weak that in only four years, after a war smaller in casualties than many unknown battles of the Civil War, we are already eager to surrender to the man who murdered women and children and made terrified couples hold hands and leap to their deaths from the World Trade Center? If so, there really is little hope for us as a people. My prayer is that careful reflection will convince the Democrats that while we are all unhappy about the war, war is hell, and surrender is far worse. Maybe the Copperheads in the Democrat party, like those who wanted appeasement of the slave owners one hundred and forty years ago, will be a minority, and those who want to keep up the fight for human decency will prevail even as the Neville Chamberlains speak of peace at any price.

Read the article.

Orienteering Sunday

Today I ran and orienteering event at Lake Kanawauke. I ran the red course, which was the most advanced course offered at the event. If the course were run along the red lines, it would be 6.55km (4.07 miles). Here's the map:

I had a watch with a split lap timer, but I failed to split the laps at each control, so I think my times are probably as follows:

S - 1: 13:57
1 - 3: 31:27
3 - 4: 6:08
4 - 7: 18:24
7 - 11: 32:59
11 - 12: 4:00
12 - 13: 8:07
13 - 14: 8:09
14 - 15: 5:59
15 - 16: 3:52
16 - 17: 4:20
17 - F: 0:28

For a total time of 2:17:55. The time limit is 2 hours, so my finish is considered OT (over-time).

I lost a lot of time on the first 3 controls as I tried to relearn orienterring, having not done it in several months. Here's the map:

Particularly irritating was control #2 - I had to give up and bear in the direction of control #3, which was next to a swamp. I found the swamp, found control #3, then doubled back to find control #2. Grr!

Anyway, loads of fun!

Just a couple o' hobos

Mechel and I drove out to Monsey Glen park this afternoon and hiked up onto the abandoned rails there. I've seen on a map that the tracks run South, then curve to the West and finally North and come back under Route 59 in Tallman, a couple miles West of the park.

I had to take some pictures, or course:

At one point, a small trestle was missing and the track just went out into thin air:

Farther along, the tracks became increasingly impassible, as we encountered more and more debris and brush on the tracks. Here's Mechel sitting on a tree in the riddle ot the tracks:

Towards the end, we saw a deer staring back at us from father down the tracks. By now, the tracks were completely overgrown, and getting through was tough:

We came out in Tallman, where Trish picked us up. Mechel is looking forward to exploring the portion North of Route 59 at Tallman, as the tracks head towards Sloatsburg.

Maybe someday.

The Dead End of Jewish Culture

One December afternoon, my precious four-year-old niece Jodi walked into my mother's suburban New Jersey kitchen and asked, "Bubbie, are you Jewish?"

"Yes, I am," my mother answered proudly.

"So am I," Jodi confided, "but don't tell Santa Claus."

I laughed when my mother told me this story, and I chuckled every time I thought of it --for twenty-two years. Last week, Jodi got married, in a Catholic church, kneeling in front of a huge gilded cross. I stopped laughing.

American Jews have been occupied for four decades in a desperate attempt to stay the tide of assimilation and intermarriage (not to even speak of their more hideous confrere: conversion). I remember as a teenager in the early 1960s sitting through sermons where our rabbi pontificated on the various solutions to The Problem. Yet exactly what is the Jewish leadership trying to perpetuate? Jewish genes? Jewish culture? A fondness for kreplach and klezmer and Isaac Bashevis Singer?

If so, no wonder the Catholics are winning. They don't strive to inculcate in their children a love for Catholic culture. They don't try to whip up enthusiasm for the celebration of St. Patrick's Day nor spend millions to make sure that every Catholic child decorates an Easter egg. They are propagating a religion, complete with God and soul and afterlife. We are pushing a culture, complete with Sholem Aleichem and dreidels and lithographs of the Western Wall. But for a culture, no matter how engaging, no one is ready to sacrifice one's life -- nor the love of one's life. Against Christianity we have pitted not Judaism, but Judaica.

Read the article.

Sukkos 2005

Eventually there will be a page for our Sukkos vacation on the Adventures page. For now, you'll have to settle for a slideshow.

(If the slideshow page doesn't appear, try this instead. If the slideshow page appears, but the slideshow doesn't begin, you'll need to install RealPlayer to view it.)