Ride time: ~4hrs
Climb: 592m (but descended 1397m)
"Oh my god. Now I understand what we are doing." - Gizi
So today started out as a pretty sweet ride. Rolling hills with a serious downwards trend. I was definitely feeling the effects of a couple of good nights sleep. We started off riding to the equator. Well, to a sign that said it was on the equator. Our GPSs had a different story. Anyway, pictures were taken. If I had my act together, I would post one. I don't though, so just imagine a birdlike stick figure with a giant head covered in half shaved stubble. Standing below a peeling sign proclaiming one to be on the equator.
Back to the riding. Sweet indeed. We were ripping along at an awesome pace. I was feeling super strong on the hills, carrying plenty of speed into the bases and pushing up to the top. Then my chain wrapped itself around my spokes. That's cool, just takes some time to slip the chain off and put it back on. While half the people we just smashed by ride on past. Off again on the chase. Then my chain slips off the front chain ring as I stood to pedal. Foot comes off the pedal and hits the ground. Ouch. Back off the bike. Send Stuart and Gizzy on ahead. Fix bike. Start riding again. Have to take it easy in case chain comes off again. It does.
There was a bit of a climb to lunch, but it was definitely worth it. There was a crate of mangoes waiting to be eaten and I was on a forced slow day, so pretty awesome.
Two delicious mangoes later (I know how to peel and eat them well after helping in the kitchen so much) I was on my way. Still pretty fast day, even taking care of my chain. At one point near the end, I got stuck behind a semi doing around 35km/hr. This was just slightly too slow for me on a -1% grade. I waited for a clear stretch of road then started my over taking move. A semi is much longer than it seems from behind. I got about halfway along and felt myself slipping, so I let out a massive hulk roar, literally yelling as loud as I could and pushed past before the oncoming traffic got too close. That truck ended up being within 200m of me the whole rest of the ride, like something out of Terminator 2.
Camp was super sweet. It was 2km down a dirt road on the banks of the Tana river. It was at a safari camp, so it had amenities, including a bar with Africa cold cokes. The best bit was that we could go white water rafting. I was a bit hesitant at first, because I can't really swim.
Turns out that they have special white helmets for people like me that can't swim, so they know who to fish out first.
The rafting was really, really good. With all the rain that we rode through, the water was really high. We got to do some Grade 4 / 4+ (they rate them themselves though) and mucked around a bit. We kept trying to ride the standing wave at the bottom of one rapid. Gizi got thrown out on the first two attempts, then me on the next. On the final go, we flipped the whole raft and all ended up in the drink. Then we did this thing where we climbed onto a rock next to the rapid and jumped in. Pretty neat. Because our guide spoke really fast English, Gizi didn't really understand what we were doing until it was too late to chicken out. Hence the quote. It was cool though.
The best thing was: at first, falling in seemed like a freaking catastrophe. By the end though (when we flipped out going doing the last big rapid backwards) it just seemed like normal. I guess that I am used to it now.
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