A New Champion

This past Saturday I planned to do a longer run, about 22 miles.  I had everything ready to go — I even had a nice hand-drawn map too, since it was a new route and area.  I woke up early and was out the door by 5am.  Nice!  This way I can get a head start on the sun.

The one tricky part of the run was the off-road trail, which I’d have to figure out on my own.  Once I got to the supposed trail entrance all I found was an abandoned house with no clear path.  So I snooped around a bit in the dark trying to figure out if it was worth navigating my way down.  It was not.

One – I couldn’t see anything and was slipping around a little.  Two – I could tell that I’d have to descend a hill-side and it wasn’t smart doing that in the dark.  Three – I heard some animals sniffing around!  So that could mean wild boars or jackals.  They have night vision, I do not.  No thank you.

So, what did I do?  I hate standing around and waiting for things.  So, I just kept running around and looped back around where I came from, waiting for — get this — the sun to come up!  Now how’s that for some irony 🙂

Once my beloved sun came up, I could finally see the “trail entrance” according to Google Maps, and there was definitely no marked trail and no real entrance.  I could see some road down in the valley that I knew I had to get to, it was just a matter of finding my way down there.

So after a good 15 minutes of investigating, I eventually found a path that looked promising.  I followed it and I reached a good marker.  As soon as I saw this new marker, it brought flashbacks of the “Path of death” in Colombia.  This marker was a stairway that started in the middle of the hillside and descended straight down.  No hand rails, naturally, and with decaying steps and slippery footholds.

And the number of steps…holy moly.  Three hundred five steps to the bottom.  We have a new champion!  As I slowly realized that this run was doomed and evolving into an “exploratory” run, I just started to enjoy it and let my curiosity take over.  At the bottom, I noticed a small stream flowing, but it was a man-made one, kind of like the routing of water to an aqueduct.  Then I came across some old building structure that looked like ruins.  Hmm…where am I?  Then…I saw a cave built into in the hill-side.  Now, that can’t be a coincidence.  Eventually, I came across a sign that said I had stumbled upon some Carmelite ruins from the 12th century.  Wow!!!  Pretty cool.

There was some random guy near a spring with his son, so I talked to him and he explained to me what the place was.  Then he offered me some of his tea and started talking about the Big Lebowsky.  Strange fellow.  He proceeded to semi-shout at me about a few things concluding with a lesson on how to say “shabbat shalom” on Saturdays instead of a simple “shalom”.  I get the feeling his tea may have had some extra “spices” in it, he seemed a little wacky.

Bidding farewell to my new friend, I made my way back home by ascending a stream bed up the valley and into the city.  I had no idea where I was, so I just followed my instincts and eventually made it to the top.  Once I got to the street, I knew where I was and made my way back home by 7:30am.  Lesson learned — the sun can be your enemy or friend, you need to take it into account.  Also, going for an earlier run gives you a jump-start on the day.

The incentive program has been chugging along.  All of the prizes for the last round have been delivered now.  All of the student surveys and most of the teacher surveys are in.  I sent “thank you” letters to teachers at both colegios.  All that’s left is to prepare a report for the principal at each colegio with the results.  And then…start planning for next year.  Jeez!

A lot of the feedback from the teachers mentioned how there wasn’t much time to plan and develop the activities.  So I’d like to extend the program to the first half of the year too.  So, that means I need to get going with the planning for 2020.  But now I have a good idea of how things will run, so there are fewer unknowns, which puts me more at ease than I was last year at this time.

Yesterday marked the 137th day I’ve been here.  My commitment is for 1.5 years, so that comes out to 25%!  Wow, I’ve been here already that long.  The time has flown.  But I’m still thinking of it in terms of how much longer I have to go, which isn’t ideal.  But that’s how it is.

Last night I felt a small sense of normalcy.  The Steelers game was on at 8pm!  Isreali time!  So, I watched the first half of our re-match against the Browns.  I didn’t recognize anyone on the team — only the head coach Mike Tomlin.  No Big Ben, Antonio Brown, Le’Veon Bell, JuJu Smith Schuster (what a name!)…where did everyone go?  The play was uninspired, but what I did like is that I still feel that sense of “we’re always in the game”.

The brawl we had two weeks ago against the Browns was pretty funny.  Imagine your opponent ripping off your helmet and then hitting you in the head with it.  Then realize that this isn’t Pop Warner football, these are two grown men.  Then picture that they play in the NFL, the highest level of competition.  And to top it all off, that it’s the starting quarterback of your own team who just got bashed in the head.  With his own helmet!  I hate to admit it, but I couldn’t stop laughing as I watched the highlight over and over.  It was just pure comedy to me.  Even just seeing this picture below makes me crack up.

State of the Steelers, 2019