CPAR Camp to CPAR Camp

Distance: 87.09km
Ride time: 3:38
Climb: 1084m

Best thing: Letting loose and hurling a rock at some kid.
Worst thing:
Stuart's best shuffled song: Hopeless by Train.

This should have been a pretty easy day: one big climb into and out of lunch, then rolling hills and a big descent to camp.

It did indeed start off pretty easy, but soon things went doolally. My left ankle was a bit bust from the day of climbing before, so I couldn't really push the dog up the big hill. Forced to spin in my granny, I found it pretty lung busting. In a good way though. It is kind of satisfying to be breathing like a asthmatic Alsatian and dripping sweat going up a hill in the sun.

The climb topped out at the highest point of the whole tour: 3100m. I have been higher than that before up in the Rockies, but it is much better to have climbed there yourself - not that long ago we were down at sea level. Even after the 20km long descent to camp, we are still at 2600m.

There are a couple of hotels and bars on the edge of the Blue Nile Gorge. One of them was the Ethio-German Hotel. Had some pretty decent spaghetti there, but no schnitzel and rosti is a crime. It wasn't a patch on the Austrian Tea House up at Wiseman's Ferry. Instead of a guy laughing at me for having schnitzel for desert there was an angry German lady telling me that there was no spaghetti left.

The view from the hotel down into the Gorge was awesome though. There was a Portuguese Bridge built during some Muslim / Christian war a few hundred years ago. It was hard to tell why they bothered - you could walk around the area the bridge covered in a few extra minutes. Looks cool though.

The other thing that happened was that my jar of expensively acquired auction Nutella broke. Sad times. Sad sad times. Plenty of "awes" as I stumbled around camp without the shattered corpse in my hand.

On one of the small post-lunch climbs, some kid took a fake swing at Stuart when he was riding in front of me. Stuart swerved at the kid to discourage him. Then when I went past he went to stick the stick in my rear wheel. I slammed on my brakes and took off after that kid. He was bricking it as soon as he saw me stop so he hard a pretty good head start. Instead of chasing him in my riding shoes, I scooped up a pretty massive rock and hurled it at him. It landed about 5 feet short, which was probably a good thing. If it had hit him, it probably would have flattened him like the little bug he was.

A truck driver saw the incident and stopped to tell the farmer something. Hopefully it was something like "Tell your kid not to mess with those crazy ferengi - they might do anything." He beeped and waved happily as he overtook me, so I guess he wasn't too alarmed by my rock throwing.

Other kid related incidents today (not all me): massive rocks being thrown; video tape strung across the road at neck height; organised ambushes of rock throwing chickens; and random displays of wangs.

The kids throwing rocks is really starting to wear on people. I think that if we were collectively in charge of dispersing aid to countries, Ethiopia would not be getting anything next time around. A lot of kids here seem to be pretty sure that we are going to automatically give them money, pens or shirts. I dunno if that is because of foreign aid or what, but it reflects pretty poorly on Ethiopia. Which is a shame, because most adults are pretty helpful and the Ethiopian riders that are with us are good. Except for the old lady that hit Simon with a handbag.

Dinner was great. It was spiced and barbecued sheep bits. Tasted just like KFC. And on the side was a fantastic pasta salad. Probably only second to the

Tomorrow is non-race day, so hopefully ii will be full of coke and coffee stops and not full of punks with rocks and sticks.