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Balagan is an Israeli expression; it's much like FUBAR, only things work out in spite of the balagan! When one looks at Israeli culture, with all of the administrative and other challenges, the “confusion factor”, it's “the big balagan”.
A typical road sign, along the bike route. |
Every time I travel to Israel I am amazed to see how productive it is, as a country, as a people, as individuals, all within the context of "the big balagan", the confusion, the absurdity of survival in the face of so many challenges, but not merely survival, but determination and success.
Why balagan ? Every year it seems like nothing can go right, at first. Managing the weeks off to travel and ride, clearing schedules, managing fund-raising, and on top of that finding the time to get in enough bicycle training so I don't feel like a one-lunged man scaling Everest.
In 2004 I was a first-time fundraiser for the WOL. Without a plan and not much more than a goal to meet at least the average per capita fund-raising result from 2003 (total fund-raising divided by the number of riders) I set out to make a pitch to everyone I knew; the membership of my synagogue, my colleagues, friends and family. Your generosity exceeded my expectations!
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Then there was the traveling, disassembling and packing my bike that first year in a plastic box designed to challenge my geometric and mechanical skills; then finding a cab big enough to get me and it and my luggage to the airport, and upon landing riding in trucks, cabs, and at times even buses, to get to Jerusalem and the hospital to reassemble the bike for the ride.
The schlepping, and schlepping and schlepping. Having to go through an x-ray scanner at every conceivable junction, questions from TSA and other security personnel; finding out that cab drivers in Israel don't have enough rack, trunk or back seat space to carry a bike box but do have a lot of twine to tie it on the roof), carrying a bike box on a bus, but always making it to my destination, intact, even if frazzled.
And so it is, but when it all comes together in a gathering of new and returning riders - all there for the same purpose - to share the love, to travel as the culmination of our successful sponsorship drives. All of this which translates into money for ALYN - the trip is sheer joy!
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