Ride time: 3:32
Climb: 238m (but descended 700m)
Best thing: Runaway win at Cataan.
Worst thing: Watching some guy clean his kid's arse with a rag then
throw the rag down in a pile behind the fruit stand.
Best shuffled song: No music today.
We started off the day with a 17km convoy through the streets of
Addis. Lots of traffic and lots of diesel exhaust, but a pretty
relaxing convoy.
Convoy ended, Gizzy, Stuart and I headed off at a reasonable clip. It
wasn't long until we had passed most of the field and caught up with
Frans, Tim and Lynn. Frans was enjoying the descending and feeling
strong after getting over the sickness so he was doing a massive pull.
Kind of felt bad bludging off him, but the alternative was dropping
back or attacking around. Neither one felt like the smart move.
After a while, we got back into a normal rolling rhythm. While I was
doing my pull, the runabout came alongside and Sharita, one of the
tour directors, yelled at us to slow down because the lunch truck
wasn't at lunch yet. Soon the truck went by though and we sped back
up.
Out of lunch, Stuart and I realised that Marcel and Frans where still
at lunch and we only had 30km or so to go. We decided to push for it a
bit and do rock-paper-scissors for the stage win if we held Marcel
off.
We pushed a bit, but it wasn't long before I saw Marcel and a bunch of
other riders coming up behind. Stuart and I were at the back and
decided to jump on the back of Marcel's group as he went by. To make
it easier we jumped back on the front of our group and sped back up to
reduce the difference in speed as Marcel went by.
Well, turns out that Marcel wasn't going by, instead he and Jen joined
our group. We did the normal rolling pulls and were getting pretty
close. I rolled off the front out to the back. Unfortunately, I didn't
realise that the last wheel was baked and falling off the back of the
group already, so I had to bridge back from him to the back of the
group, straight after pulling. This isn't an ideal situation towards
the end of the day.
For some reason, a bunch of guys started sprinting at the front, even
though they had gone _past_ the finish trucks. The finish flag wasn't
out yet and they had missed it. That gave me a couple of seconds to
catch back up and turn into the truck. In the end, Stuart took the
stage and I took second.
Cause the stage was short, 90 odd km, and fast, 700m of descent, we
got into camp before noon. Plenty of time to play and win at Settlers
of Cataan. By the end of the game, I was such a resource power house
that I was losing cards to the robber even if I finished my last turn
with nothing. In the end I could have won either by stealing the
longest road or building another settlement.
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