Hardhats at prayer

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Artist and blogger Pasadena Adjacent commented on yesterday's post:
"When I saw that first picture of the nuns I thought they were wearing hardhats. Now that took me by surprise."
Hardhats! This reminded me of a sermon a pastor friend preached a decade ago in Perryville, Arkansas. He quoted Annie Dillard, and so will I:

"On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of the conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake some day and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return."

Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk, Harper & Row, 1982

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(See this post to understand where the motorcycle helmets in the photo are.)
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Sidecar and all

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You're right, it's not a Hog; it is a BSA.
So how does it qualify as an animal for admission to our friendly weekend Camera-Critters meme?

The sign reads "Veterinary ambulance. House calls. Dr. Ariel S..."

The license is for a "collectors' vehicle."
 The rucksack looks as old as the motorcycle.

I like this. I would call this doctor, if I had a pet, and if I lived in Tel Aviv.
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Weekend drivers

From the west side of our hill you can look down on this road. It winds through the Soreq Valley. On Friday afternoons and Saturday mornings during the summer it is a Mecca for motorcyclists. Click on the photo to see how numerous they are!
The sound the engines make, reverberating off the steep stony walls of the narrow valley, always seems in sharp contrast to the quiet, relaxed atmosphere of Shabbat.
Religious Jews do not drive on Shabbat and many non-religious stay around home to rest. Public transportation does not run either. So the bikers pretty much have the road to themselves.
BTW, in Israel we do not have Sunday off. Sunday is just the first day of the work week.

(Same road without zoom)

I haven't heard them much this autumn. But today is (and all week was) unseasonably warm, a sunny 24 C or 75 F, and the bikers are out in full force to feel the sun and wind on their face.

Elegant motorcycles inside the Old City

Yesterday I felt a strange need to visit the Old City of Jerusalem. Immediately upon entering the old Jaffa Gate, I understood what had "called" me there. Look at these BMWs!!

(You see, when in college in America my mode of transportation was a Honda 50. I loved it and always dreamed of crossing the country, ala John Steinbeck's Travels with Charley, on a black BMW.)
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I circled the bikes, trying not to drool on them. I sat next to them, took pictures, read the stickers, wondered about the license plates, marveled at the helmets. Then finally I figured out that man in black was the rider.

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Click on the photo and you'll see the Austrian eagle and the name of Innsbruck.
The American man leaning on the post explained he and a small group were touring Israel with these and six other motorcycles with Edelweiss Bike Travel (http://www.edelweissbike.com/). Because motorcycles cannot be rented in Israel, they had to be brought in from Austria for this first-of-its-kind-in-Israel trip.
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They had wanted to ride to Petra also but the Jordanians did not allow the bikes into the Kingdom.
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The lucky man gave me permission to post this and I wished him happy trails. His lucky lucky wife returned from her shopping spree in the bazaar along with the second couple.
And off they drove.
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The powerful purr of the BMW engines was just as I remembered it from the 1960s.
Sigh. . .

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