Skiing Mount Hermon!!!!! (and dead baby hamsters)

Top of the Mountain to you Twinnies

Pink squishy breakfast

Just an average day yesterday - slept in, made French toast, visited friends, watched a mother hamster EAT her day old babies.  I'm not kidding, it was one of the grossest things I've ever seen.  My kids were screaming their heads off (actually I may have screamed too).  I tried to convince them she was just cleaning them with her tongue, but I was up against it.  That horrific bitch was really making a meal of them.  There were pieces of baby hamster littered around the cage.  Mainly the back ends.  She seemed to start on the heads and typically have a good old gnaw before dumping the tiny, fleshy, almost transparent lumps.  Even the survivors seemed to have head injuries, like she got started but then changed her mind.  Absolutely fucking disgusting.  I couldn't eat my breakfast this morning.  Apparently when mother hamsters feel threatened, they panic and then turn their offspring into lunch as a kind of protection. Interesting strategy - feeling worried about your kids and how the outside world will negatively affect them?? Just eat them.  Alive.  Don't forget to start with the head, none of this chickening out and going for the soft under part of the arm - it's the head all the way.  When I reported the stress/protection baby hamster eating theory to my friend she seemed relieved.  She said something like "I knew it would be something like that, she's (the mother) not usually like that".  So she's never noticed any mass murder tendencies in her hamster before, that's good, that's a positive, just a once off then.....

Snowy Tour of Duty

Speaking off mass murder (as you do for some light hearted blog talk), we have been up on the Syrian border the last two Sundays.  Israel has had the winter of dreams for snow enthusiasts.  For everyone else tough titties I guess, but at least you've all got good use of your ugg boots for a change.  Not so many good times for all the refugees and people without electricity either.  I really didn't mean tough titties to them.


Mount Hermon has seen some quality snow.  As I never for a moment imagined I would go to the snow in Israel, I had to get amongst it.  So off we went - to the good old "Mon".  Mount Hermon is actually a  cluster of mountains that stretch into Lebanon.  The peak of it is actually the buffer zone between Syria and Israel, while the Mount Hermon ski resort is on the lower slopes that extend into the Golan Heights.  All of this territory was once occupied by Syrian, but was conquered by Israel in the 1967 war.  It is called the eyes of Israel because of it's vantage point in the area, and is also important because of the sheer volume of water the mountain releases once the snow melts.  Much of this water eventually becomes the Jordan River.

Super smashing snozza

In ancient times, Mount Hermon was the site where the "Watchers" came down to earth.  Apparently, according to the Bible, they were some kind of fallen angels that were up to no good - putting the seed of the serpent into the human race (as you do on occasion).   Hermon apparently translate as "Forbidden Place".  However, I watched some alien show by accident on the history channel (I know, right?) about how these watchers were "actually" aliens, and it was the aliens that were impregnating  a few of the humans.  They created some super-race of star-children or something (sounds better than serpent seed).  Fine then.  What I want to know is, why do the guys on these kind of shows always have crazy hair?  If they want to create some kind of truthful sounding story, something believable, then start with the hair.  Get a comb, a pair of scissors, some gel - whatever, and deal with that mess.  The only person who was able to get away with crazy hair was Einstein, and that was because he was really a genius, and said actual useful stuff that we could all use.  Apart from splitting the atom, that was kind of a disaster.  Especially for all the dudes in Hiroshima.  I've been to that place, and you don't leave with a good taste in your mouth let's put it that way.  My brother, sister and I were so traumatised that we didn't speak to each other for about 3 hours once we high tailed it out of the memorial museum.

Pweety

Anyway, back to the Hermon......so it's pretty beautiful up there in the snow.  There is a Druze town just before you get to the ski resort which looks all kinds of beautiful covered in a layer of snow.  It's when it all melts that it looks like shit.  Plus it looks pretty poor too.  Poor + covered in melting black snow = all kinds of no good.  But up the top it was a winter wonderland.  And on the first day there, there was no one.  Well a few people - but in snow talk you can say "the mountain was devoid of humans, and the pow pow was all for the taking".  No lines, no pushing, no general animalistic behaviour that you expect at snow resorts, and expect even more at an Israeli snow resort.  The fact that all the skiers were evacuated a month ago when bombs started being piffed over the border did not deter us.  It should deter us.  In fact now I come to think of it, that must have been why there was nobody else up there.  I should have really left the kids behind in that case.  But it was too late for that now - wearing horrific 80s style hire overalls (God knows how many kids had previously pissed in them), those little buggers were really having a red hot crack.  We put them in ski school of course and buggered off over the back side so we didn't see shit, but apparently they picked up their ski moves pretty quick after a 2 year hiatus.  The first time we put them on skis they were 2 years old.  It was pretty much the cutest thing I've ever seen.  And hilarious  - watching these little bundles snowplow their way down a Japanese mountain.  As I filmed one of them at the end of the day at Hermon, I honestly thought she'd go about 5 metres and fall over.  But she was off.  And I had to chase her down.  I feel bad saying it - but I honestly expected her to be a complete spazza.  I was impressed.  I wouldn't have wanted to be in charge of them on top of the mountain though - one was out of control, the other was so slow she should have just rolled down the mountain.

Empty!

Bad 80s ski pants

She means business

The splits

Just a couple of punters

The next Sunday was a different story.  With another half a metre of snow, the resort closed over the weekend, and blue skis into the bargain, it was jammed packed.  It was like all the people who'd gone the week before and loved it had told 50 of their friends that there wasn't a bomb in sight.  So they all came.  And there it was - the pushing in line, the shoving, the disregard for the people around you.  Finally I felt like I was back in Israel.  There were also a lot of soldiers hanging around, and some kind of alpine skiing soldiers with all white outfits and large machine guns on their back in some white casing.  Total winter camouflage - it was impressive.  They seemed to be less about the stealth in the snow and more about the powder creaming.  I don't blame them, because I want to address the snow quality.  The off piste skiing is phenomenal. To even write those words goes against everything I hold to be true.  But I saw it with my own eyes and felt it with my own limbs.  Israel is a snowy delight (hard to believe it was 28 in Tel Aviv 4 days later).  The drive up there does not suck that much either.  It is about 3 hours from Tel Aviv.  Leaving early is recommended, as apparently on weekends the traffic up there is so bad that it makes you want to step on one of the landmines by the side of the road.

Snow soldiers in training 

Big jump holding a gun - why cant I do this?

I was just happy that we all didn't take a wrong turn and end up in Syria.  Imagine trying to explain our fuck up to ISIS....."Ummm isn't there a T-bar around here fellas?";  "So....you guys sell hot chocolate?"  "Nooooooooo, we're not from Israel, of course not - euuugghhh Israel";  "Isn't Mohammad just an all round champion? - Totally my favourite prophet, hands down"...... Dudes?  Dudes? - this blindfold's on a bit tight".  At least I would know what to do with Vali and Cordi when faced with an ISIS kidnapping - just follow the lead of the mother hamster and protect them from harm at all costs - by eating their faces off.........

You murderer.  You demented fucking baby eating murderer.