I ride to my base wearing jeans, my unit-issued boots, a t-shirt, and my faithful Sig P228 semiautomatic pistol at my side. When I’m on that bike I feel like the road warrior. The bike is nimble and light handling on the streets, but it has unmatched urban off-road capabilities, such as effortlessly climbing flights of steps. Step climbing is a small thrill I like to experience any time I can on my bike. The best is when I can fit it in the stairwell of a friend’s apartment building and just ride it up to his door. It’s awesome: What is more hardcore than riding such a machine
Riding a motorcycle, in Israel, in the rain, is a borderline death wish. The journey itself is more dangerous than the job I’m doing in the unit, statistically speaking.
8 The Counter Terrorist ~ December 2019
through the cold, dangerous West Bank back to my base to respond to an emergency counterterror mission? Nothing. On the highway, the bike is not much when it comes to top end and max speed, but I only maintain about 110 kilometers per hour anyway. The winter is another story altogether. I hate the cold. And I hate winter; I intuitively feel that humans are tropical creatures by nature. Now I’m wearing an army thermal shirt, two fleeces, a Laret motorcycle jacket with liner, and CE armor, but I'm still as cold as ever. Then it starts to rain hard just as I pass that gas station. Riding
a bike in Israel is bad enough. In the winter this little country has more accidents per capita than anywhere in the world. In Switzerland, for example, so many people drive Audis or Porsches that everyone is careful because of a sense of respect for their cars. Not here, where parking is like a day at the bumper cars track. A little bump or scratch in traffic is just a wave and a "sorry" with an Israeli accent and an “oh well, its a twelveyear-old Daihatsu anyway.” Riding a motorcycle, in Israel, in the rain, is a borderline death wish. The journey itself is more dangerous than the