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.
I'll assume that white stuff on your lips is sunscreen.
ReplyDeleteI like how you are riding 530km through a desert and the best thing I can come up with is a crude joke. Anyway, thanks for the updates and the great pics. Tell me what the beer is like there in your next post!
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