Life on Rest Days

Rest days have been pretty good so far. Normally the day before a rest day is a shorter day, so I get to the camp and set up before noon. Then there is a whole extra day where we don't have much to do except clean our bikes, tents, clothes and selves.

As I said (wrote) in an earlier post, we are resting up today in Dongola. I've spent most of my time finding and eating food. Breakfast was the last of our stash of Nutella and Nusa with some awesome bread that we found last night. Lunch was a couple of beef and vegetable rolls from a street stall, a whole watermelon, three mangoes and five bananas. Good stuff.

Yesterday's lunch was half a charcoal chicken, some pickled cucumber, normal cucumber and onion on a bed of rice. With bread.

Then dinner was a big banquet of meats, beans, bread and salad. One of the younger, slower guys was eating with the group and was loving cramming his hand into the food to load up his bread. Then explaining how he had had a bad stomach the last few days. Kids today. I wish they would just get off my lawn already and stop with all their street jive.

I spend the time between eating, which their isn't a lot of, reading, sitting around and looking for more snacks. For the last few days, I've been pretty hungry after getting off the bike and no amount of soup has been able to sate me. I found something that I hope will fill the gaps.

All in all, rest days are definitely something to look forward to.

Plans for riding into Khartoum are shaping up to be pretty hard going. We have 500 odd km to cover in 4 days. And one day will be short because we ride into the city under escort for part of the day. Could be another brutal stretch.

Wadi Halfa to Dongola

Kilometres riden: 1507.5

After getting through Sudanese immigration, we were ready to start riding. In earlier years, this part of the route was the first really rough section - bad, dirt roads full of corrugations and bumps. This year it has all been paved (though one rider managed to leave the road and fly down some embankments) - so the route has through Northern Sudan has been changed. The idea is to spend less time on the busy paved roads and detour through Dinder National Park. This is meant to be a pretty good game reserve. And we will get guarded by guys on camels with AKs.

Anyways, this means that we did our first medium sized back to back days. Two ~150km days in a row. I found the riding pretty easy going, but I am still having to tweak my setup every day to ease up my lower back.

The landscape up here is pretty surreal. Really barren desert with melted looking rock hills. Around the Nile there is a narrow fertile section where most of the houses and fields are. Every now and again, there is a comparatively massive mesa, which you can see from kilometres away.

Seeing the bigger mesas, and watching them come closer then swing by reminds me what I like most about longer distance riding. The magic feeling of pulling the landmarks towards you, just by spinning your legs, is very satisfying. Out here, where the landscape is so flat, except for those mesas, the feeling is magnified ten fold.

I am getting more of feel for riding in a pack. On the shorter day into Dongola (109km), Rod, Julianna, Stuart and I worked pretty well together. Riding in the larger bunch in the morning highlights the difference.

In the morning, the fastest group hasn't split off yet and there are a lot of people out looking to see how long they can stick with the faster riders, so the group is massive. This makes for some interesting maneouvres as people try to get into a groove while other people are weaving in and out. The funniest thing is, the first hour, the fast guys normally seem to take it pretty easy. It isn't until a bit after that when one of the faster guys (or an experimenting slow guy) will start to push the pace ups. In dribs and drabs, the slower guys will get ejected from the fast group and litter the road in panting, heaving blobs.

Yesterday, the fast guys pushed the pace up to around 48km and the large group started to fragment. I managed to get around some of the people dropping off, felt pretty strong and had a clear view of the fast guys. One of the other fast guys was near me as well and I guess is always looking for a challenge, since he is training for the Race Across America. He was keen for us to chase down the fast guys, so he lead out our attempt to bridge to Franz's wheel. He got me to within about 50m of Franz, then peeled off, so I had to get down into the aero position and try power the rest of the way. Well. 10m to go: every muscle in my body limp, breathing like a broken down steam train. Stood up to get a little bit of extra power: even my hip abductors were weak, rubbery. I had nothing more to give.

In the end, I conked out within metres of the easy breathing spot in the back of the fast guys. Pretty exciting though as the pack splits and you power around trying to get back on.

Now, the #2 woman behind Julianna is Gissi, who had been dropped a little earlier than us. Gissi had ridden straight through lunch though, so there was a pretty good chance that she would be able to jump on to the back of the fast guys as they left lunch and steamed through. This meant that Rod and Julianna wanted to minimise how much time Gissi pulled back. Straight out of lunch, Stuart thought he had a mechanical, so he pulled over and I turned around to go back. Rod and Julianna kept going, so once again I was trying to bridge. This time, I managed a pretty sustained effort at 40+ to hook back up. We made it though, and managed to pull our weight for the afternoon.

I hope everyone else finds the minutae of the day-to-day toings and froings on the bikes interesting. Sudan is so laid back, that the only other really noteworthy stuff is what kind of "facilitados" there are at each camp site. That does remind me, in Dongola we are camping at the old zoo. It is actually a really nice park with neat lawns and some good shade trees. The showering facilities are just a hose, but it was really relaxing to stand in my swimmers on the lawn and soap up then hose down. Kind of like the old downstairs shower at the coast. Very nice after a few days of baby wipes in a stinking hot tent after getting off the bike.

Oh yeah. Stinking hot times reminds me of something that happened on the last 150km day. Eric on his Bike (there are three Erics all up) rode straight through lunch then did a massive solo effort trying to stay in front of six of us for the next 70kms. It was getting pretty hot by then (this being the Sudanese desert) and riding solo with no breaks would be pretty hard (I found that out the day before). He managed to stay in front until about 8km from camp. This would have been a really, really hard thing to do. Pretty gutsy stuff. The downside was that he overcooked himself pretty badly and wound up under the truck with a bad heat attack. The first thing that we knew about it was a massive "HEE-UURGH" from under the truck as his post-ride soup bounced. He powered back again the next day to come in not far behind the four of us though.

The only other drama has been one of the slower packs managed to axe themselves. It sounds like one rider was riding on their sticky out time trial bars then managed to touch wheels with the rider in front. Then they breaked (broke?) hard and took down a bunch of other riders. I guess that is part of the problem with riding in a bigger pack of inexperienced riders.

I am getting to be a dab hand at setting up and breaking down my camp each day.

No pictures, because you need a photography permit in Sudan and I haven't got one yet.

Aswan to Wadi Halfa Ferry

So. In Egypt they have this thing called the Aswan Dam. It was pretty neat to ride across both dams, but that isn't the main reason that it exists. The main reason is so that they have a lake big enough to run the worst ferry service in the world.

It really does pull no punches. The cafeteria is infested with cockroaches. A pile of cigarette butts in the corner that the door opens across - if you can't see it when the door is open, it mustn't exist I guess. People spitting on the floor in the corridor. Bugs living under the mattresses. Stuff getting pilfered off the bikes on the deck. By the end of the journey one of the squatters blocked up (probably because some people on the tour still haven't worked out that you bin, not flush toilet paper here) and overflowed.

I felt pretty run down after spending most of two days and a night on the ferry.

Luckily, we found some pretty good food in Wadi Halfa, including some awesome spicy / curried potatoes, so that recharged my batteries for the 150, 150, and 109km days. So far, Sudan is a lot more laid back than Egypt. Everyone seems to be appreciating the lack of touts and other tomfoolery that got foisted on us in Egypt.

Day Something - Luxor to Edfu to Aswan

Kilometres riden: 1090

Just finished the two day ride from Luxor to Aswan. Two pretty easy days.

On day one, the fast guys were taking it easy and riding with Rod and Julianna's group. We didn't seem to be pushing too hard though. When it got to be my turn to pull, I decided to conduct a highly scientific experiment to answer two questions:

1. has my changed bike set up let me ride any more consistently?
2. what happens when I take the group speed from <35km/h >40km/h?

Does the changed bike setup let me ride constantly with no need to stand?

I feel pretty confident about my answer to this: kind of. I can definitely ride longer, but I do still get a fair bit of lower back pain when I am in the middle of the group. When I am pulling, I have no pain at all. When I am in the back, I can stand up and weave around to let the pressure off. In the middle, I can't stand and I get pain. I think that maybe this is because I don't change my gears as the group speed changes.

This is a pretty easy thing to fix if I remember to think about it.

Having my seat 2.5cm lower and further forward definitely lets me cruise at a higher speed without having to strain much. It is like a free 2 or 3 km/h.

What happens when someone takes the group speed up?

Very easy to answer. What happens is that all the fast guys also speed up. They will also start to ride past someone at the front that is going too slow and take another turn. This is kind of cool, but means that if you come off the front expecting the pace to ease up, you will be pretty surprised.

Yesterday, I was in the back position with Stuart immediately in front of me. He slowed for a few seconds to roll his shoulders and when he looked up, a 10m gap had opened up between him and the next person. We both tried to bridge back to the main group, but neither of us had enough beans to make it.

We caught the bunch again at lunch and tried to hang on again. I only lasted two more pulls before I blew up and evicted myself from the group. After a few kilometres of solo riding, I found Stuart again and we rode it out.

All in all, one very informative day.

Day two was much of the same. Riding alongside the Nile, going through little villages. Kind of thing that is par for the course. When you are riding next to the Nile. Nice as it is, I think it is good that we went East to the Red Sea then over the mountains to get to Luxor. It would have been pretty monotonous following the Nile the whole way.

In Aswan today. Our bunch got an awesome escort in. Two motorcycle police keeping a lane on the Corniche clear for us and stopping traffic at intersections. We might have almost looked like we knew what we were doing to an untrained eye.

We ride over the dams tomorrow to catch our ferry to Wadi Halfa. A group of us have stocked up on our ferry food. Our prize possession is the massive jar of Nutella we found. All that we know about the ferry is rumour. Bed bugs? Power points? Decks full of goats and chickens? We have no real idea. The TDA guys like to keep things a bit interesting.

I am sure that there will be at least one goat. In my mind, it will be like getting on a domestic flight in the USA where people are stuffing all their junk into the overhead lockers then complaining that their lampshade / hat box / baby carrier won't fit.

Oh yeah. I have found the best McDonalds anywhere. The McDonalds here is on the Corniche el Nile. It overlooks the river, so you can watch the Feluccas go by as you eat your two meals. And an Oreo McFlurry. And a chocolate sundae. And another coke. Plus, it has the best toilet in all of Egypt.

This is the packaging left after six people finished eating. We were like some sort of primal embodiment of gluttony.

Plans

Kilometres riden: Same as before, but with a short ride in Luxor during which mild adventure took place.

The rider board has been posted with set of stages that will take us to the next rest day.

We don't really know how hard or easy these days are going to be. Rider speculation is that days that we do a reasonable distance (100km+) mean that the conditions are going to be easy. So, fingers crossed, I should have a pretty cruisy run into Dongola. We'll see what Sudan has to say about that.

The two short days are for getting on and off the ferry. These days are a bit risky EFI-wise, because if you get a flat or other mechanical in the convoy, you run a real risk of going on the truck so that the convoy can keep on moving.

That would not suck.

Day Six - Desert Camp to Luxor

Kilometres riden: 867.7

Today was by far the best day of riding so far. Straight off the bat we dropped straight down, 30km clean to Qena on the Nile. I had had a cold all night and eating hurt my chest, so I was a bit worried, but as soon as I got on the bike, I felt really strong, so I could pull pretty hard to the river.

A day like this really makes road cycling make sense. With just two or three people in the group, it is quiet, and the perfect conditions mean that we can steam along. So satisfying. I'm not sure that is is quite as satisfying as getting a technical section right on the mountain bike.

Other people weren't feeling as strong after yesterday. People had jumped on the dinner truck straight away. This was by far the fullest that I've seen the bike rack in the morning.

I thought that these guys missed out on an awesome ride. Apparently though, the guys at the back caught a bit of grief. One rider got hit by a tomato and rock. Another one got mobbed by kids.

Once we got onto the Nile, the scenery really changed. It was so green and cultivated it kind of reminded me of Queensland. That they were harvesting sugar cane probably added to that a bit. We had a couple of sketchy, out-of-the-saddle pushes to overtake tractors pulling huge loads of cane.

Even the people seemed heaps happier to see us. All the little kids and people shout out "Heeeellloooo, how are you?" and look pretty stoked when we wave back. I kind of wonder if the protracted way it is said is because they only ever hear cyclists yelling it out as they go by, and they think the Doppler effect is part of how it is said.

Now that we have advanced a level, the police have changed uniforms. There are now guys in traditional looking robes (which could be the latest Spring fashion for all I know of Egyptology) with shotguns. These guys are on every bridge heading to the West side of the Nile. I have no idea what is on the West side that is so valuable, or on the East side that is so dangerous. I am a stranger in a strange land. In the way of video games, there are still the normal police at their checkpoints and in their utes as well.

These little critters at lunch we also pretty happy to see us. Two of them ran behind our lunch truck, but as soon as they saw my vagrant beard, they turned and booked it for the hills. Lunch was right by this building. It is a topic of contention whether buildings here are left unfinished because uncompleted structures are taxed differently or what.

Lunch has been something to look forward to every day so far. We basically eat pita bread with some vegetables, a meat like tuna or baloney or leftover dinner from the night before. Even on a fast day where "lunch" is at 0830, I normally cram down a couple. I kind of feel like I could eat a pita sandwich full of just margarine and be pretty happy. Yesterday, I even ate some meatless sandwich meat and found it pretty tasty.

My hobo beard has reached a new level. It stops looking like a beard and is now a fringe of sorts, jutting away from my chin like the edge of a crab.

All good things must come to an end though. So, while we have two days rest here in Luxor, I headed into town to find a barber. The biggest difference between an Egyptian barber and the barber in Yass is that there isn't cricket on the TV here. Apart from that it is pretty similar. My do was so good, another guy went to the same place. I told the guy that I wanted bak-sheesh for my finder's fee. He found that funny enough to give me 25 piastres.

The end result.

Oh yeah. The other difference is that in Egypt, they roll cotton over your face to get all the small hairs off. So now I have Egyptian style plucked eyebrows. I am a stylish looking guy.

They watch you while you... everything.

So, the police here in Egypt are pretty different to in Australia.

Firstly, you see them everywhere. In Giza, they had a couple of covered pickup trucks at most intersections. Out here in the desert, they have police checkpoints every 50km or so. Sometimes they are stopping cars, sometimes the cars breeze straight through. But they are alway official looking structures with guard towers and a compound.

Secondly, they all have guns.

These guys are really concerned about us. Tourism is a big industry over here, and a bunch of layabouts with nothing to do except eat food and drink questionable Egyptian beer most be a real boon.

The upshot of this is that we have been seeing a lot of the police. Even before the tour started, the groups of us that went out riding in the morning would pick up a police escort. They'd block a lane of traffic so no-one hit us. On the first real day, we had that huge convoy that shut a lane of traffic and all the highway entrances and exits. This has all made our trip way easier so far, and it is always reassuring to see them go by on the road and wait for us to give them a thumbs up.

Even through a tiny town today, riding alone, I got escorted by police car until I went out through another huge checkpoint. A tiny part of me thinks that it is a bit like being run out of town - John Rambo style. Mostly though, they are really friendly guys, so it isn't a big deal.

Camp tonight is by a police / army checkpoint on the road through the Red Sea Mountains (I guess) from Safagha to Qena. There is the normal road blocks and cool steel rope that they can raise across the road to stop traffic. The normal guard towers and guys with rifles.

While I was out digging a hole, two of the border sentries stopped me from going to far from camp - pointing at their guns then out in the distance. I guess that they meant that other guys with guns might be out that way as well. Vague as this is, it is a bit unsettling.

So yeah, pretty different to Australia.

Day Five - Safagha to Desert Camp

Kilometres riden: 776.1

Link for the ride: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/22852957

Today was the first day with any real hills. We set off from Safagha straight up in the the Red Sea Mountains, heading towards our desert camp. The first 65km to lunch was a constant 1% or 2% grade. Nothing too punishing, but having unrelenting nonetheless. Of course, there was a headwind. It is pretty hard to describe what is like to ascend for 65km to the top of a plateau, then the stark, exposed moonscape at the top. Probably best to think of it as the moon, by brown and super windy.

The scenery was pretty awesome to start with. At first, it kind of felt a little like little Moab to me. Then I couldn't decide if it was more like Fallout 3 or Red Faction: Guerilla. Obviously, I have had a broad education.

I stuck with Rod and Julianna's group for the first 30km, but my lower back is giving me some problems. The best way to relieve that for me is to stand on my pedals for a couple of strokes. Problem with that in a group is that it disrupts the rhythm of the riders behind me and I can't pass on hand signals from the front. So, the only time that I can indulge myself is after I have taken a pull and am rolling along in the back.

Their group ended up stopping on the road ahead just after I did, so I rode in front of those guys for a while.

People here need to pray a fair few times a day, so on highways, they have these handy things.

A few kms up the road, I found the Egyptian riders with a snapped chain. These guys are not really into carrying a lot of tools, spares or knick knacks, so the guy was fixing it by hammering on his chain with a rock. While he was using my chain breaker, R + J's group cruised on by.

I ended up spending most of the day riding solo, fighting the constant headwind. The wind was bad enough to make the descent from lunch to camp seem like a constant climb. I thought that my GPS was broken when it was telling me I was really going downhill.

I think that everyone found today a bit hard - definitely the most riders I have seen turn up on the truck at the end of the day. Some riders have been really unlucky with early injuries and poorly fitting bikes. I was pretty lucky that Shane and the other guys at Bike Culture did such a good job of getting me sorted, even with the last minute bike change. Today, one of the other riders saw the contents of my repairs bag and was gobsmacked. Some other riders seem a bit underprepared - one rider didn't bring a bike computer.

This is my trusty steed. So far, it has been an awesome ride.

I don't think that I have lost any weight yet. Hopefully, that will happen before I get to the real hills in Ethiopia. I haven't had to really use my tiny granny ring just yet though, so I still have that in the bag.

A switched on Egyptian turned up at camp with a cooler full of beer to sell and made a killing. I can't drink knowing that I have another day to Luxor, then another two the Aswan crossing.

Day Four - Desert Camp to Safaga

Kilometers riden: 613

Another pretty cruisy day. I hooked up with a really consistent rider called Eric to try and smooth out my day. Yesterday and the day before I had been pushing a bit too much in the morning and suffering a bit in the afternoon.

We managed to hold it together for the pretty short day. An already short, 102km day got shortened by the shifted campsite the night before, then the road towards Hurghada was too wet for us to ride, so we took the road straight to Safagha and dropped a couple of extra kilometres.

Eric and I got into a pretty good rhythm where he would pull on the downhills and the flats and I would pull us up the hills. It made things a lot easier. I accidentally dropped him on one hill and managed to take a self-portrait while he caught up:

Got into camp before noon. Pretty different. We went from this:

To this:

Went for an authentic burger, fish and chips for lunch (TDA truck lunch was at 9am or something on such a fast day), and am going to spend the afternoon drinking beer and relaxing on the beach.

Tomorrow is meant to be a pretty hard day: 139km and the first real hills of the tour.

Day Three - Desert Camp to Desert Camp

Kilometers riden: 530

I got up at around midnight to employ the cat method and found that the headwind had blown itself out during the thunderstorm and a pretty fair tailwind had sprung up.

This made the ride today much, much easier. I spent the morning riding in a group with Jen, Jason and Jim but after lunch I saw a couple of riders in the distance and decided to stretch my legs a bit. I managed to catch a few riders and felt pretty good doing it.

But. Everytime the road swung straight south, I caught a crosswind. By myself, I got knocked around a fair bit. Seeing the road in the distance turn south east was awesome though.

We had a couple of unexpected events today. First we all got held up at a police checkpoint in the morning. Roads here aren't designed for rain, and the police were not sure whether our escort would be able to follow us if the roads were too bad. I guess that they sent someone ahead to find out, because eventually we were allowed to go on. We weren't allowed to take any photos of the checkpoint, so you will have to settle for the first piece in a series I like to call: bearded self-portraits.

The second hiccup was that the police decided that our normal campsite was a bit to prone to flooding, so we rode another 12km (6km according to the TDA folk) up the hill to a new campsite.

All in all, an awesome day. With the tailwind, it really felt like I was speeding through the desert.

Day Two - Desert Camp to Desert Camp

Kilometres riden: 383.3

This is the board we get each night at the rider meeting. Today was an easy day. We had a monster tailwind and smashed out the 160-odd k's with plenty of time to relax at camp.

Just kidding.

Completely contrary to expectations, we caught a huge, unrelenting headwind straight after lunch and spent the whole afternoon grovelling into it. This was definitely a hard day. By about 30km out we were suffering. The Egyptian riders that led out hard in the morning felt it even more. They stopped to fix a flat - a couple of kilometres later I saw them breeze past in the back of a ute. They caught a lift all the way to the water stop just before camp. They had worked pretty hard towing us in the morning though.

Jen, Jason and I tried to work together to spare ourselves from the wind a bit, but no configuration that we tried really helped.

The final hill of the day turned straight into the wind for a massive grind up the hill. So good to finally get into camp.

By far the hardest day I have ever done on a bike. Including coast trips that have gone all wrong.

Just to top off the night, there was a massive thunderstorm that night that made dinner a pretty wet affair.

Oh yeah. They have this thing here called the Red Sea.

Day One - Cairo to Desert Camp

Kilometres riden: 215.3

Day One was a pretty interesting ride. We started with a pretty (well, very) slow convoy out to the pyramids. We sat around there and applauded ourselves for a while until we felt sufficiently good about ourselves. I managed to find a cup of coffee and keep up a veneer of civility.

The Australians ready to rock and or roll. I mostly did the rolling around, trying to remember how the whole bicycle thing worked.

Back row, right to left: Stuart, Me, Rod, Adrian, Patrick.

Front row, right to left: Julianna, Annalise, Wayne.

The convoy from the Pyramids out of town was crazy hectic. About 10 police cars and motorcycles. They blocked each exit and entrance to the highway for us, so there was a lot of upset Cairenes wondering why they couldn't get to work that morning. Some local riders joined in and gave everyone the heeby jeebies - cutting in front of people starting a 11k bike ride isn't as awesome as they thought it was. One person flatted twice and lost their EFI status on the first day.

After 32km of pandemonium and Eventually we got to the real start of the day's riding and were free to get on with it.

The landscape was pretty desolate the whole way. I stuck with the second or third group for most of the time until I started to cramp after around 120km. I guess that the whole not drinking will do that to you. Luckily it was only one more hill until camp so I didn't suffer alone too much.

Riding in a group is pretty novel for me. Doing mountain biking, you are normally riding alone, and even if you are in a tight group, there doesn't seem to be much communication. On the road, nearly everything warrants a hand signal, which is pretty lucky, cause a pothole can really ruin your whole day. Despite that, it is pretty peaceful. I'd say it was more relaxing that riding alone - the noises of other people's bikes seems to be quite calming.

Camping was out near a rest area just off the highway. Pretty unremarkable all around. Managed to get my tent up without any angernons.

Photos of Egypt

Kilometres riden: 82.2 (almost there)

The tour starts for reals in a couple of days. So far my bike hasn't exploded, no-one has got all dramatical or anything.

Believe it or not, the bottom part of this building is a mausoleum. The top is a shanty type deal. It is in the Northern Cemetery. A bunch of the mausoleums there have new tenants, there are the normal streets shops and everything. These people are super, super poor. This was an eerie place to be.

Because books and whatnot are totally boring to read, we weren't 100% sure that this really was a cemetery / housing estate amalgamation. Luckily I could use my super-power of reading Arabic numbers to see all the dates on the plaques. We turned around and left after coming across the first funeral-in-progress. Some things are a little too strange, even for bumbling goofs.
This in the Khan el Khalili. Parts of it had a reputation for being very touristy, but I only saw one other tourist in the couple of hours we were there. If it is all a show for our benefit, it is really elaborate and well orchestrated.

It is pretty funny to imagine that as soon as we walk around the corner, all these people stop hauling bricks up with ropes, haggling over fresh produce, and almost running people over with scooters. Then they flip out their newspapers and slump in a chair until the next tourist wanders by.

I ate a date pastry thing here.

The view from the internet cafe on the very first day. After getting in at 4am and braving the Sudanese Consulate, it was pretty nice to sit by this sunny window and relax.

Best Pizza Hut restaurant location so far. Service was pretty good as well. If you squint, you can make out the Sphinx. You can't see the army of touts selling totally authentic gear though.

Additional

My tout name is "Indiana Jones" or "Cowboy" because I have a hat. That is just how they roll.

Riding and Pyramids

Kilometers riden: 57.2

Boom. I have busted my riding in Egypt cherry. A bunch of powered down past Memphis and back to blow the cobwebs away. On the way, I was thinking how nice it would be turn around and get the wind at our backs. Well. Turns out that the wind was on our backs on the way down there. The other guys had actually riden on the road before, so we rolled around taking turns at the front and cranked out the return pretty fast.

After I took my turn pushing at the front, I pulled to the side and rolled to the back. The police following us in their car (oh yeah, I forgot to mention that) thought that made me pretty soft and pointed a few times for me to get back out the front. Luckily, years of sucking at riding has made me pretty good at miming being really tired and, well, bad at riding.

I saw all sorts of stuff riding. Mostly, it is strange riding past donkeys. Not something that you do every day back in Australia.

After sucking at riding, we took a cab out to the Pyramids. I have a photo of where I went for lunch to upload, so I won't spoil the surpise. We bought our tickets and went inside and straight away the guy I think of as the "wallet inspector" asked for our tickets and started powering away. He got really upset when I asked for them back: "what? you think we think that you are all millionaires and are after your money?" Pretty funny for a guy that was after our money.

The funniest trick the touts have is saying "Hey my friend you look Egyptian" and then they cram stuff in your arms then ask for money. After a while you get used to it and just laugh at them, but between those guys, the trash and the wallet inspector it really took shine off. The pyramids aren't a museum as much as a game preserve where the touts can hunt fat, waddling tourists.

In a proper country, I could have taken a helicopter around the pyramids and been back at the hotel to lounge around the pool. At least there is a sound and light show, so I will be able to rock out to Thunderstruck, Skyfire style.

Cairo Town

Kilometers riden: 0

Cairo is where I am at. Not sure really what to say about it. All the blogger.com controls are in (I guess) Arabic. All I've managed to do is apply for my Sudanese visa. They don't have lines or whatnot over here, kind of like they don't have traffic lights or lane marking (that get paid attention). The guy right behind me must have really liked me, because he was really keen on dry humping me the whole time we were in the line.

I think that crossing roads here is going to be one of those things where you think "Hmm, I am getting pretty good at thi-" and then you get hit by a taxi.

Etihad was actually a way better experience than I thought it would be. I got put in an aisle exit row. Food was pretty good. I missed out on an ice-cream though. I watched the first 90 seconds of "Gamer" on the flight. I was way too embarrassed to watch the whole thing while people could see me watching it (remembering the time I could see a guy rewinding the risque parts of Loius and the Brothel on a plane) but it looks awesome, so I will definitely have to catch up on it later.

No photos because I haven't unpacked my 1,000,000 zip lock bags. Apparently Cairo is a world leader in pyramid technology, so I will take my camera along to that. I'm sure that no-one has seen any photos of that before.

Hobo Style Well Wishes

Ben has provided this helpful translation for people less hobolike than him: http://www.northbankfred.com/illus4.jpg

Hurty McFlaggy was the mooted name for my bike. Given the lack of flag and southern cross stickers, Hurty McNotFlaggy it will have to be.

Thanks Ben!

Traditional Victory Meal

Kilometers riden: Still 0.

Since I have almost finished getting all my stuff together, I figured that my last victory meal (for a while) was in order. Plus, I need to test posting photos. Makes a change from the normal shoe portrait.

I normally only have this meal when I have written some code that works or something equally uncommon.

Healthy and nutritious.

Really makes me look forward to the other traditional victory meal: airport Hungry Jacks.

Nimble Vagrant Active

Kilometers riden: 0.0.

I think that I am actually almost ready to roll out.

The only thing that I am missing is a Southern Cross sticker for my bike. I had figured that everyone loves Australians. Some people tell me that this might not be 100% true though, so it might be just as well that I didn't get that sticker.

Oh yeah, the other thing that happened is that I ended up with an extra pair of knicks and a missing pair of bibs. Not so annoying, and might even make things easier when I inevitably get gastro.

I got around to testing the fancy luggage lock I got for my locker on the Tour. It had some picture instructions for how to set the combination. Turns out, it was way too complicated for me. I got to the last step where the hasp was meant to lock down and it just wouldn't go down. I raged out and tried locking it down with a hammer. The inside of the lock was quite interesting.

That is the sort of calm thinking that will minimise fuss and maximise enjoyment. Don't worry, I am not packing a hammer.

Right now, I am 102kg (thanks Pecan Pies), so I should have plenty of fat to chew through and last the distance.

For those that need it, here are the latest contact information for the Tour guys:

By Phone

Toronto Office: +1 416 364 8255 (between 10am and 6pm EST)

South Africa Office: +27 84 353 1975 (between 2am and 10am EST)

By Twitter:

Twitter is a web based service that allows users to send short, 140 character, messages to each other via SMS (text) and the web. For TdA, using twitter will allow us to send 5 -10 short updates each day from the tour. Family and friends of riders can follow these updates and even reply via twitter. To receive updates you must have a twitter account and follow us at http://twitter.com/tdalive. More info below on Twitter.