Scooterer Stories – Part Six – Dead Sea and Beyond

Scooterer Stories
By Louis the Scooterer

The travels of Louis the Scooterer, a retired former South African who has found an unusual way of getting to know Israel.

Part Six – Dead Sea and Beyond. Still aiming North, but with a backtrack Southward.

OKAY, we finally have to leave Masada, but lets quickly go to the cableway complex for a final look, and a fruit juice drink at the open air fruit juice stall on this large terrace outside.. (have cameras ready..) great juices and great views.

So, when you leave one place, before you blink your eyes many times, you are at the next place, this time the Kibbutz Mitzpe Shalem, also with these magnificent views and also the home of ARAVA beauty products, and has a lovely large cafetaria and shop. Inside the shop we were shown a video about the area and the products, and every day (exept Saturday) you can watch the factory machinery and workers through glass windows. As always the people are so friendly, and a continuous flow of buses and cars bring the visitors.

Metsukey Dragot, Hooray, finally, Oh well, on yet another follow-up visit on a beaut day (a Saturday morning) the weather fantastic, and travelling in a rent car, with a young man who comes from India, to work for short periods in hi-tec in Netanya. We drove into this magic place on top of the mountain, and immediately saw a group of young people sitting on a terrace, drinking cool drinks and drinking in the scenery of the Dead Sea, and the mountains.

We found the reception/entrance into to a lovely big coffeeshop, a big room with a big counter with stools and the other walls have low chairs with cushions and the tv set, and a door to the terrace. Here, Leah welcomed us and explained that this is a “hosting village”, that is always full to capacity on a Friday night, and also many religious people come to enjoy and relax…the full Saturday. Others come to climb and hike and do rappeling and mountain stuff, others come just to meditate, and walk on the mountain paths and climb rocks and also has a lovely play area for children. Then a couple of hours after sunset [on Saturday] the place almost empties and the weekenders travel away, relaxed, to their homes, (could be anywhere in Israel).

Anyway the 1 young lady and 3 fellows on the terrace gave us much info about their lifestyles and homes and jobs and their travels and their plans and hopes, and 1 single ibex perched on a high rock was “performing” for us. A large round low building is for “getting together”, also on the “other side” a bedouin tent, looks exactly as you may imagine from a bible story, where you sit on rugs and cushions and sip tiny cups of tea.

Certainly I will be back to sleep-over and have breakfast, in this magic place where you can see the sunrise and the sunset from the same spot. A couple of hours flew by and it was time to leave.

A few kms up the road at a sign “Ovnat” is this “out of this world” restaurant, made from a large container, with some colourful signs, and here I had my “best freshly made sandwich” and sat in the “middle-of-nowhere” eating and drinking, and seeing the scenery. After a visit to the most unbelievable toilet/building, then we need to carry on.

A few more scenic kms with sea on our right we see a high nondescript fence that you dont give a second glance ?
At the end of this fence is a sign pointing to the sea, and we turn in to Einot Tzukim (Ein Fashkha) for a visit and a walking lesson never to be forgotten.

We have a swim in a man made pool that is fed with fresh water from stream from the mountain. No filtration plant here, fresh water flows in from a stream, then flows out the other side to make its way into the dead sea. The place caters for picnickers and campers and hikers and outdoor types who love “roughing it”…nothing unusual about that, and some days during summer holidays, and Jewish festival days there will be thousands of people around this “open area”, loving the heat and what comes with that. (of course much garbage at the end of the day.)

The closed area [not open for the public] is called “The Hidden Reserve” and small groups are taken on a tour through this absolute paradise, which has many types of trees and shrubs and flowers and much of interest, also a large pond that is fed with fresh water from underground, that pond also has “fresh water fish” that have been introduced, just a few meters from the saltiest water on the planet. AMAZING, [ well done rangers. NO mess here.] The walking tour shows where the water line was in recent years and how the sea has receded, and current water edge is quite a distance from the road. A good tour with much information and I was amazed that the small children already know so much about nature. At the end of the tour we say our goodbyes to the people and the guides, and back on the road we now stop at a small sign (that we never saw before, that the rangers told us to look for) that shows the water level (painted on a rock) of about 100 years earlier. AGAIN AMAZING.

Also amazing is the friendliness of all the different rangers and guards that work there. My personal hat off to Adi who I met the first time when I was there on my scooter.(2001) Then on a later visit together with my daughter from South Africa, (2003) he gave the 2 of us a private guided tour through that magic “Hidden Reserve”.

Digressing for a moment , that, when together with another daughter and husband, also from S.A. we visited (on my birthday) April 2005, and found this unbelievable large crowd, we hung around quite a while, then left without seeing Adi and not visiting the hidden reserve) that was the busiest day of the “high season”, and probably the day with the most flies and probably the biggest mess to clean up… (cant win em all !)

A short drive to “Lido” where the regional council offices are, filling station and a coffee and eats place and a few pictures later we get going south again. (This is the “lowest point” on the planet (and for our trip) its the furthest point going north that we do on this plan, then we head back south.) reasons become clear, later

NOW, going south again a quick pop-in to Kibbutz Kalia, which also has b / b facilities and also own the date plantations across the road. We are invited into the dining room for a cuppa and a chat. Also on their kibbutz, is…

QUMRAN – is the place where in 1947, some Bedouin boys found unbroken pottery inside the caves, which contained the Dead Sea Scrolls, and now some areas have been excavated and ancient ruins found which tells the story of how it was living there in those times. On paying your entrance fee and receiving a brochure you go into an auditorium to watch a video about the place, then explore at the open excavations. A couple of hours with cameras, and imagination, and then some refreshments in the new complex with this shop and cafetaria. Dont look at your watches coz guaranteed the time has flown…so pleasantly ?

Now we have the return drive (south) and pop in to Mineral Beach for a quick look and a quick drink, ( this area also belongs to Mitspe Shalem where we went to Ahava shop.) We will be driving for a couple of hours til we get to Ein Bokek, (time for a short nap and to catch up on reading some of the brochures), and sightseeing, and a few stops to see the same views from different spots. Some rock sculptures on the side of the road commands us to stop for pictures, then a couple more stops at several bridges and viewsites, and finally we leave road 91 and go on scenic Road 31 up to Arad. (Now you can see why we backtracked south.)

Louis the Scooterer is 69 years old and it sounds like he’s just getting started.

Shaving – The Old Fashioned Way

By Jeffrey the Barak

New things are better than old things and new gadgets are better than old gadgets, right? Wrong!

Sometimes the impetus for tools and gadgets to evolve is not to make them better, it’s to change the marketplace to receive more expensive goods. There is no better example of this than the field of men’s’ shaving. Yes the good old Gillette safety razor, invented in 1901, and the good old brush and mug are better than the modern plastic wonders at providing a good shave, and in the long run they save you money and they save your environment from many extra cubic feet of plastic landfill.

The history of shaving is a bloody one. Until the introduction of the straight razor, the ancients used shaving knives, and before that, various sharp shells, flint, and rocks. We see pictures of ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans without beards, and we know that their less sophisticated bearded enemies were called Barbarians, because they had beards. Through copper, bronze and iron ages, blades improved in sharpness, but not safety. Razors eventually became steel, and then in the mid-nineteenth century, they developed handles.

But this article is not meant to be a complete history of shaving. Such a history can be found at various websites following a simple web search for “history shaving”. So I will instead quickly switch to recounting my own history of shaving. As a man with a tough beard and a need to shave twice daily to remain approachable, I have quite an interest in it.

I was born in 1957 and during my childhood in the Sixties I watched my father shave each morning with what I now recognize as a Gillette double-edged safety razor with a double door screw open head. I would stand beside him and pretend to shave with my little plastic toy shaving set with paper razor blades. But my first real shave was at age 12, in late 1969. By that time I had received two electric shavers as bar mitzvah gifts, so I began my shaving career with an electric shaver.

Meanwhile, the seven decade reign of the worthy safety razor was coming to an end. Gillette had to contend with competition from Schick, Wilkinson Sword and others, and the only way to sell enough razor blades was to change, and change often. My father, by this time had acquired his Gillette Techmatic, a razor with a handle and a ribbon blade. A turn of the handle and a new section of blade presented itself. There was now a heap of plastic following the old blades to the landfill, and it continues to this day.

By the time I first tried to switch to wet shaving in 1971, the razor was in the era of the Gillette Trac II. The old tradition of father teaching son to shave had by this time been largely forgotten and the extremely effective brush, mug and soap had been replaced by aerosol cans full of foam. The combination of poorly lubricating shaving foam, the non-swiveling, easy clogging, twin-blade cartridge and the lack of instruction meant that my early wet shaves produced a lot of blood, every single time.

Through the periods of the swiveling Atra series and Sensor series I came in and out of wet shaving, usually for a short while until I bought the next new electric shaver.

Recently, I returned to wet shaving with the Schick Quattro and much better aerosol gel, and I got good results, and no cuts. I was content with my method, But then I saw a big plywood sign.

The store was not even there yet, but in the Century City Shopping Mall was a sign that there would soon be a store opening called The Art of Shaving. A whole store just for shaving! I wondered what they could sell to stay in business. Didn’t every drug store sell Gillette Mach 3’s and Schick Quattro’s? Perhaps they would sell Braun and Norelco shavers? I decided to look them up on the Internet. What I found were expensive wet shaving products and an interesting notion that perhaps shaving brushes and shaving soap might work better than the aerosol gels.

Exploring further, I found more websites selling razors, soaps, brushes, mugs etc., with more educational material and lower prices. Realizing I had never actually really shaved, the old way, I found ClassicShaving.com and purchased a large British silver-tipped badger brush, a German Merkur razor that looked like an early 20th Century Gillette, a stand, and some shaving soaps, razor blades and a mug. I was excited, and even though I was not really that bothered about the long term financial savings and lack of discarded aerosol cans and plastic razor cartridges, my (quite expensive) purchases had me anxiously awaiting the package.

My first shave yielded a comfortable and easy shave. Being careful to use a 30 degree angle, by placing the guard down first then raising the handle to 30 degrees to bring the blade into contact with the skin, and by applying no pressure, I was delighted to be able to shave quickly and easily with no cuts. The result was not as close as I would have liked, and not as close as that achieved earlier with my Quattro and Gillette gel, but it was the first try. Shaving this way takes practice. One immediate improvement was the lack of clogging. With my tough hairs and the aerosol gel, the closely set multiple blades of my modern razors were always clogging and needing to be rinsed vigorously after about three inches of shaving. But there was nowhere for the safety razor to get clogged. Soap can go straight through.

I particularly enjoyed the lathering up with the brush and mug. Without a thick layer of white stuff on my face, the glycerin based soap left an extremely slick surface and the hairs were standing at attention waiting to be cut down. I immediately had no doubt that a good brush and shaving soap will prepare anyone for a shave much better than anything from an aerosol. However, to get a very close shave will take careful practice with the safety razor.

While many aficionados will tell you that you should not strive for a very close shave and should not try to cut the whisker at a level that will be below the skin’s surface, this is exactly what the multi-blade systems have been trying to do since 1971. But do we really need to do that? The re-growth of curly beard hair can be uncomfortable if you shave too close, and no matter how close you get with your Quattro or Mach 3, it’s only close for a few hours when the whiskers you pulled out and cut at below skin level start to poke through the follicles again.

The face seems to prefer a shave that’s not so extreme. And here, a gentle practiced touch with an old fashioned safety razor can offer the most comfort, when used lightly and at the correct angle. Of course we all have different skin types, and some shavers are prone to ingrown hairs, (usually men with curly beards), or bumps, whereas others can tolerate a much closer shave. Trained barbers will always shave with the direction of the growth of the hair, as opposed to against it. For most of us that is generally down, but often the neck hairs point back to sides of the neck.

Our instincts, and yes, even our experience, tell us that if we shave up, against the growth angle, we’ll cut the whiskers shorter and get a closer shave, but we will also be inviting razor burn and nicks and cuts as the blade takes that rough ride up the steps. It seems the skin experts want us to sacrifice the potentially closer shave for the more comfortable drag in the direction of growth, downward. But as everyone really knows, a close shave can be easily had if we lather up two or three times. The first pass can be in the direction of growth, the second across the direction and the third, against the direction. But you know what? Even three shaves like this with a safety razor is less irritating to the skin than a single pass with the multi-blade cartridge.

After a few days of carefully shaving in the correct direction, with the correct tool and following a good brushed on lather, I began to get results comparable to that which I achieved with the Schick Quattro. In fact I believe the shave is now just as close with the single razor blade! But remembering that each Quattro or Mach 3 cartridge is a plastic device that comes in a plastic protector, which is itself in a plastic rack of the back of a plastic handle holder, and that those cartridges are about $2 each, I can’t help thinking again about the savings in money and plastic waste that switching to a safety razor will bring. And we won’t even begin to discuss the new Turbo razors that use disposable batteries to make them vibrate.

True, each pack of ten razor blades comes in a little plastic box and even these blades can cost from 15 cents to $1.50 each, depending on where you buy them, but that little box is a tiny amount of plastic by comparison, and the blades are double sided, making them last longer than a modern cartridge. And each cake of soap in that mug can last as long as a few cans of gel or foam and only costs from $1.50 to $6. The brush and mug can last a lifetime, if you’re already an old geezer like me. Again, no landfill. In fact I just bought 100 Israeli blades on Ebay for $15, and there is no plastic box at all.

It seems strange to talk about saving money after spending $80 on a stand, $90 on a brush, $30 on a razor, $12 on soap, $4.50 on a bowl, and $4.50 on my first pack of blades, but the blades and soap will last a while and the rest of my purchase may last longer than I do. In fact, if you decide to buy a shaving brush and a safety razor, bear in mind that they can last forever so try to get everything right in your order. No sense buying a less expensive pure-badger brush to save money, when for a little more you can get a silver-tipped badger brush. You will get into this, and you will end up upgrading, so it will save you money to get the best brush the first time out. Unless you lose your brush or your razor, they may be the last you’ll buy. So consider if you want the original design, or a thicker handle, or a longer handle, or a butterfly opening top. The best selection will of course be online, not at the mall or the drugstore, so try starting at classicshaving.com and then do a Google search for the competitors. Choose your tools carefully.

A pack of 12 Mach 3 cartridges is around $22 these days, and a can of Series Gel is around $3. It’s very hard to calculate, but I guess that after about 3 years, I’ll get my investment back in savings. But once again, that’s not what it’s about. We have to shave and it’s a drag, so why not enjoy it with good tools and materials, and why not spend a few more minutes a day doing it with care and skill?

After decades of putting up with the need to shave, I now look forward to it. Shaving the right way is fun.

One day I shaved my right side with the safety razor and my left side with the Schick Quattro. The results were quite interesting. The modern razor felt safer and faster. But it needed a lot of rinsing or it just didn’t get to the skin at all due to all the hair stuck between the four blades. And also with the Quattro, I could sense tugging, in other words, it felt as if the hairs were being shaved progressively shorter, just as on the famous Gillette television commercial animations, (the reality of which is under dispute to this day). But following the rinse and the pat dry, the side of my face shaved with the Quattro had not in fact shaved me any closer than the side shaved with the safety razor. Not closer, just faster. Perhaps the imminent release of Gillette’s five-blade Fusion razor is the proof. All these blades are nothing but marketing. Each manufacturer trys to get one blade ahead of the other.

So now to the question that many readers who have made it this far will be dying to ask. Why didn’t I go the whole way and learn to shave with a straight razor? Why didn’t I get into honing, stropping, and all the rest? Well I thought about it, but quickly realized that King Gillette’s innovation was called a safety razor for a reason. I think it would only be a matter of time before I dropped the straight razor and did something nasty to my willy, or my foot or something else that happened to be in the way. Too risky for me I’m afraid.

So in all likelihood, I will stay with my brush and safety razor for my daily shaves, but I will also keep my Quattro and can of gel for traveling, and for shaving things that are not my face, as I still can’t picture putting a double edged safety razor anywhere near my “personal hairy areas”.

Jeffrey the Barak is the publisher of the-vu

Growing Young (and Perhaps Sick) with Human Growth Hormone (HGH)

By Dan Hall

Propagandaville – a quaint little town with white picket fences, nuclear families, neighborhood schools, and friendly salespeople who’ll be as nice and polite as possible so long as you’re shelling out money to buy their wares. Yes, in Propagandaville, money is king, and snake-oil peddlers abound, pushing their products onto unsuspecting people all in the name of health.

News of Human Growth Hormone or HGH has flooded the television and print advertising market in the past decade. Claims that HGH will retard the aging process, boost your sex drive, build muscle mass, help trim fat, cure depression, make you more intelligent, and cause you to feel better and healthier are ever-present in the media. But are these claims accurate? Is HGH therapy truly the new elixir of youth, or are the claims unsubstantiated, inaccurate, and just plain wrong?

HGH research has been occuring since as early as the 1960s, perhaps even earlier. HGH isolated from human pituitary glands is often used therapeutically to treat people with growth hormone deficiency, which could easily lead to reduced muscle mass and bone density. Of course, a true deficiency in growth hormone is not normal; it can be caused by a variety of factors, including hypopituitarism, tumors of the brain, and so
forth. Traditionally, people who need HGH treatment visit endocrinologists and do not purchase their HGH from infomercials.

Truthfully, HGH no longer exists, as scientists have stopped using true Human Growth Hormone and now market synthetic growth hormone. People claiming to sell HGH are not truly selling Human Growth Hormone but a synthetic blend that could very well be anything! Chances are, what is being sold is nothing more than amino acids or proteins wrapped in a neat little package. Unless you have a true GH deficiency and are willing to be diagnosed by an endocrinologist, you’re most likely wasting your money on mass-marketed HGH.

What’s frightening about all of this is that HGH does have its side-effects–ones that are rarely if ever mentioned on television. Diabetes, a gross enlargement of the nose and other facial features, a thickening of the skin and connective tissue, an increase in muscle mass but not strength, nerve damage, joint pain, certain cancers, edema, and other symptoms have been reported after prolonged use of commercial HGH. This is not something to be taken lightly, for it can very well have a negative effect on your health.

Homeopathic HGH (which is sold in small dosages) may actually live up to some of the hype, but only because the dosages are small enough to affect a change but not significant problems. Muscle mass may increase, skin may appear healthier, and energy may rise–in part due to the pituitary gland producing more natural GH as a side-effect–but these are all temporary effects. The true causes of aging have little to do with a lack of HGH and more to do with a lack of nutrition and/or an overabundance of toxins lodged within the joints and tissues. HGH can only add to these problems, not solve them.

Longevity cannot be found in a pill. A life-transformation is required to slow, stop, and perhaps reverse the aging process. Changes in diet, thought process, activity, and other areas of life are all necessary to remain young and live a long, healthy life. Pills, powders, shakes, oils, and other products will never replace true healthy living. And until we, as a society, can embrace the natural laws that will keep us healthy, we will continue to look for the next great wonder drug, thereby fueling the informercial conglomerates well into the future.

Dan Hall is a teacher and author living in Georgia. He is the author of the book Neohygiene. Visit him on the Web at http://www.neohygiene.com.