Ride time: 4:40
Climb: 1777m
Best thing: 20km descent to the bottom of the Blue Nile Gorge, listening to Battle without Honour or Humanity (honourable mention to the super-cold shower at camp).
Worst thing: Nothing.
Best shuffled son: Yeah! by Usher
Today was the day that we had all been looking forwards to - the Blue Nile Gorge day.
Everyone seemed pretty slow to get on the bikes in the morning. Most people had been up at 0230 to put the flies on their tents when it started to rain. I normally put my fly on whether it looks like rain or not - the world definitely doesn't need to see me baby wiping myself after a long day on the bike.
I set out solo and was feeling pretty good. Rolling hills with around 100m of climb are actually feeling good to me at the moment. I even managed to keep up some speed on the unpaved sections of road. I stuck to my normal plan of riding however I feel and it paid off with me being the first into lunch - unprecedented. Because today had a time trial section starting from the bottom of the gorge, there needed to be a TDA staffer down there to record people's start times. When I rocked into lunch (literally, the lunch was up a loose, rocky road - I spat rocks out my back wheel), Chris, the mechanic with whom I tried to make an accidental break back in the day, was still lunching it up. I wasn't too worried though cause I knew that I would be a slow descender and catch me up pretty easy before I got to the bottom.
The ride into and out of the gorge was unbelievably epic. A lot of the time not the way down, I couldn't stop thinking "Wow, this is the Blue Nile Gorge, and I am getting to race my bike down it". When I wasn't thinking that, I was either nodding along to Electric Samurai (best riding music) or shitting myself dodging rocks and potholes. After a loooong descent, the actual bridge across the Blue Nile comes into view. Still a few hundred metres above and a couple of kilometres away from the bottom, this is when I first started noticing the road back up the other side of the gorge. Doesn't look so hard I thought.
Once I got to the bottom, Chris was there waiting for me to start the time trial. Just for laughs, we did a push start, so I got a couple of free kilometres per hour right off the bat. That lasted until the first corner.
The ride up actually wasn't too bad. I will never be a fast climber, but I think that I am becoming more consistent. I spent less time feeling like death and more time looking at the view and pedalling away than I did on the big climbing day to Gonder. I still stopped at the coke stop 10km up the hill for a couple of icy cold cokes, and a few times to take pictures. I also stopped at a spring to wet down my head. This was definitely the day that I sweated the most. Kind of gross.
I got passed by a bunch of riders. First Adam on the descent. Then Marcel and Jethro powered past while I was at the spring. Then Tim while I was sitting on the coke stop's stoop ("You, you got what I need", etc). Then Gizzy a few kilometres from the top of the hill. I didn't feel too bad because most of those guys are all strong riders.
On the last set of switchbacks, an Ethiopian guy started chatting to me in English (yeah, I was going that slow). After the preliminaries, he asks me "Are you tired?" "Yes, very very tired" says I. "Oh. What can I do to help you?" "Nothing I am afraid." That guy and his friends were walking to the to of the hill as well, and they just cut straight up the hill instead of going up the switchbacks. They almost beat me to the top. Heh.
Camp is pretty cool. We are on the grounds of some NGO started by the TDA organiser called CPAR. I am camped under a satellite dish for shade and extra radiation. There are also super cold showers. At first I thought that it was way too cold to get into, then I remembered that I had been sweating in the sun for hours. My whole framework for judging showers has changed now. The best shower is the one that you are having right now.
Added bonus - electricity.
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