Into the Makhtesh

It's 6AM on Shabbas and Joshua is snoring -- seems to be a common behavior among the zoids -- as Josh & David happily tell me I'm guilty of the same offense.  Josh has licked his jet lag by going to bed past 1AM, but I'm still struggling.  Of course waking up at 6AM isn't too bad, as we generally need to be on the road by this hour on our biking days anyway.  It is also early enough that I can catch a view of the sunrise in the Makhtesh.  I walk out to the 220+ bicycles in the parking lot, with the intention of biking just the half mile to the lookout on top.  At the parking lot, not surprisingly there are already a couple of riders out there looking for their bikes.  Shemaya and Danny K. (both MAMILs) are planning a ride to the bottom and back (1200' of vertical in 2.5 miles, about 10 percent grade).  I'm unprepared for such a ride -- I've got my jeans on, a long sleeve shirt, and a kindle tucked into my back pocket... but I've also got no so self control.  I cannot refuse their offer to join them.  So into the Makhtesh I go.  The scenery is spectacular, and the sunrise well worth the descent (er, the descent is "free", but well worth the effort of the ascent).  

I'm back in time for a 7:30 breakfast, and of course David and Adam want to ride -- so at 10am we take off for my second trip into the Makhtesh.  We've got some additional company, Howard and Jeremy from Philly are joining us.

At the bottom instead of just turning around we a short hike to see the Carpentry -- a little mountain with oddly shaped stones which look like wood blocks.

There's not much else to do now, but head back up.  It takes about 30 minutes to slowly pedal to the top.  Adam shows off his testosterone by reaching to top far ahead of David and me, turning around and biking back down to accompany us back to the top.  It definitely juices his Strava miles and climbing stats.  So glad that only one of the 4 of us is hyper competitive.