In the past “baker’s week,” I’ve bumbled into a few things. Happily, I’ve had lots of help — both in bumbling in, and in flailing back out. Quick update, then off to an Independence Day dinner with future friends whom I do not yet know:
— interviewed moto-medics from three separate EMS agencies, and accompanied two of them on calls.
–experienced Israel’s Holocaust Memorial Day, and their Day of Remembrance for the more than 22,000 Israeli citizens killed in military service and terror attacks. Here’s a hint: instead of having white sales and baseball games, they close the stores, shut off their TVs and have ceremonies to venerate the fallen. Now there’s a concept.
–interviewed Jerusalem’s special police unit, and rode with them. Note to file: these cops don’t even bother to carry handcuffs. They carry rifles, pistols and spare magazines.
–rode a few places, including the Jordanian border near the Sea of Galilee, West Bank and the Western Wall (hey, I’m a westerner), the Negev desert, close to Gaza (but no border crossing), lost in Jerusalem any number of times, successfully elbowed through Tel Aviv traffic…
–rode onto an IDF military base to interview military police on Harleys.
–had drinks in a beach bar with a young engineer and lunch at Yaffo port with combat zone photojournalists.
–toured Ben Gurion University (very flat) and the world’s largest maktesh (not so flat) by Land Rover.
-lost my wallet somewhere on Israel’s Highway 4. Spot of inconvenience, quickly remedied through the ministrations of Pretty Wife (yay!), many eagerly helpful Israelis (yay!) and without even a dash of assistance from the eminently useless AccessAmerica travel insurance company, which kept me on hold, on my dime for an international call, for 40 minutes before announcing that I had a personal problem that I should personally manage. AAA, you need a better carrier.
Details to follow in Motorcyclist magazine. Buy a copy; it’ll do you good.
Wheels up tomorrow. I want to go home, but I don’t want to go away. Curious feeling, that.
"Jack Lewis takes the overall literary crown with his new book...there’s a lot more to Lewis’s work than what it feels like to ride motorcycles.” — Ultimate Motorcycling
"Insightful and from the heart ... a driven and much recommended look into the mind and conflict of the next generation of war veterans. " — Midwest Book Review (Reviewer's Choice)