July 15, 2006 - BiblePlaces.com

Tour de Beth Shemesh

Here’s an announcement of competitive and fun bike rides next week:

An invitation to residents, riders, visitors….

Come watch Israeli’s top Competitive Road-racing Cyclists compete in Beit Shemesh! Races begin at 7:00 am; Elite long-distance riders start at 10:30 a.m.

Then, take advantage of closed roads for a Public Ride – fun for the whole family! (6.5 km).

WHEN: Friday, July 21st

To register, go to www.bikeisrael.com and click on the Tour de Beit Shemesh banner at the top
of the page (the banner is in Hebrew). Enter each registrant separately.

COST: 30 NIS per person until July 18th. (Special rates for more than 4 family members.) All pre-registered riders (by July 18th) receive a bottle of water, t-shirt, medallion, and certificate of participation.

Riders who do not pre-register may register at the race site on the day of the race. Cost is 40 NIS (but does not include t-shirt, certificate, or a medal.)

Payment for ALL riders is on-site (next to the Beit Shemesh Memorial for Fallen Soldiers on Sderot Ben Gurion, across from the Fire Station), from 8:30 – 11:30 a.m. All riders (pre-registered and unregistered) must check-in before 11:15 am.

Riders under 12 MUST be accompanied by an adult rider. All riders MUST wear helmets.

Competitive riders (ICF insured and with completed health permit), should go to www.shvoong.co.il for more information.

Middle Bronze gate, Beth Shemesh, January 2006

Tagged Travels

Hazor excavations update

With all of the rockets falling, I was wondering how the Hazor excavation team was getting along. Several of my friends are digging there, but I hadn’t heard from them and a check on one of their blogs revealed nothing. Today part of the team showed up where I live and so I got a report.

They were digging away at 8:30 Thursday morning when they heard some loud noises and saw plumes of smoke about a mile south of the tell. The excavation director decided that they should take an “early second breakfast” and by the end of that, they were headed back to the hotel to grab some things. They spent the night in Tiberias, which today has been hit a number of times as well. There is no word yet on whether digging will proceed next week, but I’ll tell you – not a chance. Not necessarily because of real danger, but because of liability. In the case of Hazor, the complete lack of guidance system on these Hezbollah missiles hurts the excavators. If the terrorists could aim the things, they surely wouldn’t be aiming for a tell (and one of the Palestinians’ ancestors, to hear the late Yassir Arafat tell it).

As far as excavation results, this season seems to have been much better than last. There are some good finds particularly coming out of Area M (map here). Unfortunately, unlike Tel Gath, I don’t know of anything online about this year’s excavation.

Hazor Area A, May 2006