Israeli 'kiddie ride' includes mud, rain, fog & exhaustion

Great blog post from a cyclist colleague in Israel, utterly bustin' it on a week-long children's charity ride:

"I just spent a week riding through mud.

Not the kind of nice warm Dead Sea mud that tourists buy. I’m talking about freezing cold mud. It gets on your arms, your legs, in your nose, and between your teeth. Every day after the ride you take a shower wearing your riding gear to try and get some of it off. But it’s just not possible.

The mud gets on your bike chain and in your gears. It gets in your brakes and clogs your pedals. Your bike weighs a ton no matter how often you try and clean some muck off.

What an amazing week."

The rain was so thick, you could hardly see where you were going. Then it started to get cold. Yael reminded me of the article I wrote before the ride about how we should just accept the inevitable and embrace the rain.

I told her to shut up."

Read the rest.

Israel: 'Wheels of Love' Bike Rally (video)

Saul Singer of the JPost provides this great video (check out the hi-def version) of the '08 Wheels of Love Bike Ride for the Children of ALYN Hospital in Jerusalem.


Go to ALYN's donation page.

Shabbat Shalom, Purim Sameach and have a great weekend.

Possible cancer cure? Israeli zapper kills brain cancer cells

Hey, remember that UK doctors' plan to boycott Israeli colleagues and medical advances? Hmm. Well, feel free to boycott this, yutzes:

An Israeli-developed treatment that specifically targets rapidly growing cancer cells with electrical fields shows great promise in treating patients with brain cancer.

The Novo-TTF (Tumor-Treating Fields) device, invented by Technion Professor emeritus Yoram Palti, uses electrical fields to disrupt tumor growth by interfering with cell division of cancerous cells, causing them to stop proliferating and die off instead of dividing and growing. Healthy brain cells rarely divide and have different electrical properties than cancerous brain cells. This allows the device to target cancer cells without affecting the healthy cells.

"This is a new general modality for treating cancer. In a way it's similar to radiation, it's physical in the same sense, but the major difference is that there are no side effects..."

"This trial showed a big change, and on the basis of these results, the FDA has approved going on to bigger trials. So far, at least in the lab, all types of tumors have been sensitive to the treatment, so we're hopeful that it can treat all forms of cancer," he added.

That's right. A possible miraculous, dramatic cure for certain types of brain cancer - and maybe others. But hey, it's from those awful Israelis, so, like, fagedaboudit, right? More on this developing technology here.

Oh, and while we're at it, talking about them 'orrid Joos? Take a look at this news report video of an Israeli army officer and little Palestinian girl in a Jerusalem health care facility. Stick around for her parents' comments: