Finding My Way: This and that

I am wrapping up this part of my trip in the Middle East soon. I will be headed back to Jordan on the 31st now that the general strike that closed the borders in Israel is over.
Hoping to catch one more Israeli Baseball League game before I go, but I might not have time. It's actually been fun ball, from the games I've seen. Well, except for the part where my team, the Bet Shemesh Blue Sox had their asses handed to them by the Tel Aviv Lightning. It was embarrassing. Juan Feliciano, the ace of the Bet Shemesh staff gave up 8 runs in three innings and still has an ERA of 1.93, somehow.
In other sporting news, the Tour de France is a joke, again. Last year I was rooting for Floyd Landis long before his absolutely unbelievable Stage 17. I didn't make it to work that morning it was so incredible to watch. But, he tested positive that day. Surprised? No, not really. This year my other favorite to win this years Tour, Alexandre Vinokurov, my longtime favorite rider due simply to his insane attacks, as best seen in the 2005 tour, tested positive for homologous blood doping. It's hard to see this as anything other than a mistake. Sure, he was cheating, but he probably got someone else's blood rather than his intended blood bags. Cheating has become so sophisticated that it's about slipping up rather than not doping. Homologous blood doping is so easy to detect now that there isn't a chance in hell Vinokurov did it intentionally. He got the wrong blood bag. It's likely the same thing happened with Floyd Landis last year. He probably wasn't using testosterone at the time, however the blood (his own blood) taken in the off-season did contain testosterone. Or that's my theory anyways.
Yesterday however, to make things worse, Michael Rasmussen was fired by his own team, Rabobank, for lying about his whereabouts during training. Wouldn't be that bad, except that he was the race leader, and after his astounding win yesterday when he dropped Alberto Contador (who I wouldn't be surprised to see kicked out soon too) the likely overall winner. In addition to a couple other positives this tour. It's a wonder they haven't cancelled the rest of the tour, and expect to see sponsors drop like flies at the end of this season. At the least Astana and T-Mobile will drop. To sum up, Mauricio Soler of Barloworld is my new favorite rider. He's just a fun story, a great rider, and has the funniest riding position going. He also is going to win the King of the Mountains Jersey, and is only :50 behind Contador for the young rider White Jersey. If Contador gets booted, (which I am speculating in a totally unfounded way) he would take the Polka-dot and White jerseys.

On a slightly different note, I had the chance last night to see The Syrian Bride, an Israeli made film about a Druze woman crossing the Golan border to marry a Syrian cousin. Of course Syria does not recognize that the Golan is a part of Israel. As far as the Syrians are concerned, she is crossing from Syria to Syria. As far as Israel is concerned the bride is renouncing her already fractured Israeli identity by crossing the Syrian border. Once she crosses into Syria she can never return to Israel. Of course her transforming identity is bound up in her Israeli identity-in=opposition to the dominant Israeli national identity.
Having experienced some of the absurdity of Syrian bureaucracy some elements of the film were perhaps much funnier than they might have been to others. The film was very well made, but the characters were very dry in some ways. Really there were only two characters with enough depth to really try to understand, and thankfully they were strong enough characters. Otherwise the film might have been very drab. Nonetheless a very worthwhile film, if only for putting a human face on an ignored people and conflict. It would be very helpful though to know something about the Druze, or at least be familiar with some aspects of Druze history.

Photos from last weekend up north!
The Bahai Gardens from the outside.