Mordecai's first faint

So, this past Friday, I fainted for the first time in my life.

After sleeping in a bit, I decided to go on a bike ride to a place I'd heard about a few times, Nesher Park.  It's a very nice place, with two suspension bridges (made of steel, not grass), and a large cave. There's also a geocache hidden there.

As it happened, Nathanael was gone to his lab, and I wasn't necessarily planning to be back in time for the frisbee game in the afternoon, so I decided to go alone.  I grabbed my bike, phone and water bottle and took off.  Across campus to the gate is all downhill, but once off campus, it was uphill for a few kilometers.  Determined to make it to the top without stopping, I settled in to a low gear and kept cranking.  Reaching the top, I was proud of myself, but noticing that I was less hydrated than I should have been.  I had also skipped breakfast, so I was feeling a little light-headed from the long uphill climb.  After pulling in to the park entrance, I stopped and stood up, straddling my bike, and took a little drink.  Then I went to take another drink, tipping my head back.... The next thing I remember is pleasantly waking up on the ground.

Waking up was by far the nicest part of the whole experience.  I had the exact same feeling as when you sorta drift out of sleep, snuggled deeply in blankets, and refuse to think about what time it might be.  I remember thinking "wow, what a dream I had about riding really fast, and then crashing."  Then I thought "hmm that's funny, I'm lying with my bike between my legs"
Then I thought: "why is my waterbottle over there emptying the last bit of water out of the neck?"
It was about then that I noticed some blood on the pavement by my chin.  After a quick check for oral bleeding (none. hooray!), I evaluated my body, trying to see if there were any injuries.  I determined I had cuts of unknown degree and unknown locations on my face, and my jaw was sore.  Once I decided I was ok to move, I sat for a bit and drank the last water that couldn't get out of the water bottle.  Seeing the last of the water trickle out when I came to is the only time indicator I have for how long I was out; apparently only a few seconds.

I cleaned my wounds with some tissues and borrowed water from a big birthday party that was happening in one of the gazebos in the park, and then went on to look around the trails and find the geocache.  I was a little concerned that I would scare some people since I didn't know how scary my cuts looked, until I realized I could take a picture of myself with my phone as a 'mirror' of sorts.  In this way, I discovered one of the benefits of a beard: it not only hid the worst cut, but since my beard is dark, you couldn't tell by looking at it that part of it was wet with blood, instead of just sweat.

While I was hiking in the park, two dogs started to follow me around.  It seemed like they were abandoned or runaways, since they were very friendly, and both had collars (with no tags or id).  However, one of them was very thin and thirsty, and I was sad since I don't know of any shelters that I could take them to.


The bike ride home went great, and I got back just as the frisbee game was ending.

A few days later, everything is healing nicely, and I'm trying to make sure that I keep good tabs on my hydration level.

Two Trips

So, there have been two different weekend excursions that I've been meaning to talk about on here. One was a while ago, and the other was last weekend.

I took a day trip up to Akko with Tracey, a materials postdoc here at the Technion. It was pretty cool, as the old city is really small, and completely see-able in one day. There was this cool tunnel there that they only discovered like, 20 years ago. The walls of the city go right into the Mediterranean sea. It was a Crusader port back in the day when all that was going on.

see pictures here: http://picasaweb.google.com/mordecai.veldt/Akko

The other trip was last weekend, when I went with some people from www.couchsurfing.org to the artists' village of Ein-hod. (www.ein-hod.info) It was pretty cool, too. The main attraction was the Nisco museum of mechanical music, this collection of music boxes from back when music boxes were made for a family to be able to have music, even if they couldn't afford a piano.

here's some of the music boxes playing: first second third last

There was this one slightly crazy-acting guy who did microbrewing and also sold pizzas that he made in a home-built oven. We also stopped in a few galleries and then went to this REALLY tiny secondhand clothes shop there, where I bought a tie, just to buy something really.

After the secondhand clothes shop, we walked over to this place that did pottery and would have pottery workshops where people could come experience pottery on a wheel. This place was in someone's backyard basically, and they also had a used book collection. I bought a copy of Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman and finished reading it this week. A good book, overall. I think my favorite line from it was something about him discussing how he never could throw a ball accurately... he would aim somewhere and "it would be off by about a radian." For those who don't know, a radian is an angle measurement which is a little less than 60 degrees.
some pictures here... including some of the couch surfers actually on a couch. http://picasaweb.google.com/mordecai.veldt/EinHod

After the artists village, we went to the beach and hung out there for a bit. I took a short swim, and it was not too cold.

I'm slipping on these posts...

Ok, so my goal is a MINIMUM of one post per week. last post was a week ago... so I guess I'd better post today. It's not for a lack of material :).

Last week I went to the haifa sculpture park with David Erdos, a guy from Ulpan who is from Missouri. After the sculpture garden, we stopped in the ba'hai garden for a little bit and then we tried to find the prehistory museum, which on the map we had, looked like you could get to by a nice walk on a "scenic nature trail."

Finding the scenic nature trail itself was quite an interesting search. After looking all over the area indicated as the start on the map, we finally decided to go down what looked like an access sidewalk for some businesses off the main street. At the end of this, we found a hole in the fence, from which we could see what seemed like it might be the ACTUAL trail that we wanted. Still a little unsure, we crawled through and then continued down past the zoo. There was quite a bit of litter, and some

little campfire rings in the first 1/4 mile or so, and it quickly became clear that the prehistory museum was either the fire rings we were seeing, or that you got to it by some other way. However,

the map indicated that this scenic nature walk had a convient end that we might as well continue on to. We never did find THAT end. Having gone far enough, and passed an abandoned old pumphouse, we turned back to admit defeat.

On the way back up (the whole walk had been significantly downhill), we met two israeli girls who were hiking the trail, which on their (much nicer) map was shown to go almost all the way down to the sea. At this point, they invited us to join them on the way down, and I agreed. David, however, needed to get some things done and went back to the Technion.

On the way down, we found a cool little cave

that looked like it had been walled in and maybe used as a house at some point.

After parting from the Israelis, I took a few pictures of the rocks in the surf, some of which turned out ok.

Then I hung out on the beach for a while

and then walked over to the haifa mall, which was quite nice, though not as big as the "Grand Canyon" (the hebrew word for "mall" is קָניוֹן pronounced "kan yon", so the big mall in haifa is named the grand canyon).

At the mall, I got a kitchen knife for only 10 shekels b/c it was an open package. Great deal. I also bought some childrens books. Then I took the bus back to the technion.

And, a preview of topics to come: the haifa zoo, the weekend trip to Jerusalem.