Kilometres riden: 2892 + some more where my GPS was flat.
Pretty extreme. This was definitely the hardest day so far. If I'd written this blog three days ago, that would have been the hardest day. If I'd written this blog two days ago, that would have been the hardest day. If I'd written it one day ago, that day would have been the hardest day. An awesome buildup of unpleasantness.
First day out of Khartoum was a ride in bad paved roads with a lot of traffic. This was a two lane highway. Trucks and buses going in the same direction as us cut it pretty close one at times. Trucks and buses overtaking coming towards it cut it even closer. We had a couple of times where we got forced off the road, down the embankment and into the dust at the side of the road. Stuart had one awesome recovery from a fully sideways bike in the middle of the pack that could have been disastrous.
After a while, our group got a bit more road savvy. When I saw an oncoming overtaking manoeuvre, I'd ride out into the road and start waving at the truck or bus to at least let them know that we were on the road.
The headwind, awful road and tension of looking out for being smashed by a truck got to me after a while. When some teenagers on a street corner started yelling "F*** you, m*******f****r", etc, I lost my temper and dropped the C bomb on them with massive prejudice. That shut them up.
Anyways, after that epic haul, we got to an already forgotten camp site. Oh actually, there was something memorable about it. I was feeling ok when we got in, so I went off riding to see if I could find the Nile. Well, I didn't find the Nile, but I ended up riding through a tiny little village - real authentic looking stuff. I managed to find a little store with a working cooler, so I grabbed a bunch and took them back to camp to share around.
Later on, Stuart and I went back to grab some more stuff. I've got to paint a bit of a picture here so that you understand how ridiculous things got. We were both wearing shorts (almost unheard of in Sudan) had our wide-brimmed hats on underneath our bike helmets and are riding ridiculously expensive push bikes. So not exactly blending in right?
We got back into the village and a relatively fancy looking white car pulls up full of dudes in the traditional white robes. One of the guys asked us if we had a permit to be there: of course we don't. Then he asked if we have a passport: they are back in the trucks with our luggage. Then he tells us that he thinks that we are spies, sent from America to do bad things. I was pretty amused, I dunno if a spy would rock up in such retarded looking clothes. Anyways, after he looked through the photos on my camera and we kept asking him to call the Ministry of Tourism and check with them, his demeanour really changed. He told us that we were free to go and buy our snacks. Pretty awesome all round.
I should say that later on, the same guy apologised to one of the other riders that went into the village. The whole time he was pretty professional and so on as well.
Back to the awfulness.
The next day wasn't actually so bad. We had some more traffic and headwind in the morning and the day dragged on a bit. About 20km from the end, our group picked up a police escort and got lead through the capital of the region that was hosting us.
It was pandemonium.
There were packs of people lining the road on both sides. Screaming and chanting at us. It was pretty awesome for us, we were the second group through that day and it was still pretty early, so all the kids were excited just to see us. Apparently, it was pretty un-awesome for the later groups - particularly the people that like to ride alone despite TDA's direction.
Rider meeting that night was pretty fraught with claims that TDA should be making sure that kids are under control and so on. TIA. A couple of people even accused the faster riders (which I guess includes me in the case) of teaching the kids to high-five. Sometimes, people are just ridiculous when they are upset about stuff.
The third day out of Khartoum was the start of the dirt. After 44km of paved roads, we got to the real stuff. Stuart and I blew straight off the group and went for it. It became obvious pretty soon that Stuart completely dominates me on the dirt. His franken-fork (almost exactly what I was thinking of bringing) seems to really help on the corrugations that are so popular over here.
Anyways, we did 90km of dirt that day and I have to say that some of the little descents and corners reminded me exactly why mountain biking is so awesome. Unfortunately, those bits were surrounded with kilometre after kilometre of headwinds and corrugation action.
Some of the same people that had a hard time the day before got lost on the way to camp and were pretty annoyed by the time that they got in. Bad luck seems to run in batches out here. Some people get no flats, others get multiple each day. Some people are still pretty fit, others are plagued by everything going around.
The best bit about the day was being off the main roads and seeing the farming villages a bit more closely. On the main road, we get a pretty skewed impression of Sudan. Most people outside the big cities are involved with agriculture. It is pretty surreal to be riding down the market street of a little mud brick or thatch village and see people cooking the traditional foods. Or see a guy on a camel herding his goat / sheep. Awesome though.
Day Four was the real killer. This was the day that we were going to head through the park and cash in the extra kilometres we did to get down here so early. It was slated to be 140km of dirt but the tour was still telling us that we would have time to take pictures and so on. I figured that we wouldn't be doing a lot of stopping with 140km to go on the dirt.
Sure enough, after we wasted a few minutes getting our convoy of 8 or so riders together to start the ride and spent 1.5 hours at lunch in a welcome ceremony, us front riders were really getting pushed for time.
Oh yeah - this was all on the worst surface that I have ever ridden on. If it wasn't bone shuddering corrugations it was loose sand over bone shuddering corrugations.
After lunch, my average dropped to 11km/hr or so. The strange thing was, I was still feeling strong in my legs and back, but my body was totally shattered. We all made it to camp before the cut off, as well as Rod, Julianna and Gizzy from the next convoy.
We were all pretty happy to still have EFI.
After 128km of Dindir National Park, all I saw was some warthogs and baboons. Shame about the lions and bucks or whatever. I guess that it is the wrong time of they year.
The Day After the Hard Day
So, some people (me included I guess) thought that the follow up day to the park escapade would be an easy one. Turns out not so much.
The day started pretty hard for me, even before getting on the bike. I felt like I was cooking myself in my tent and thought that my neck was strained. When I got up for the morning routine of digging and hole and looking for Nazi gold, I was so tired that I almost fell asleep while I was squatting. Then when I stood up, I got way dizzy and had kneel back down. After that, it felt like someone had replaced the whole world. Everything felt subtly different. I wouldn't have been surprised if I had fallen asleep for a few minutes and woken up when it was slightly brighter.
It turns out that what I thought was a sore neck was a throat infection, so I am taking some sort of penicillin derivative to get that under control.
All that has encouraged me to drink heaps more water after I get off the bike. Kind of like Randy in Cryptonomicon, but instead of drinking until I sweat, I plan on drinking until I have to go and pee.
Some parts of the pre-lunch part were on an even worse surface than the day before. Totally parched soil that was rock hard and full of wheel grabbing cracks. I managed to flip over my bars and cork my thigh pretty good.
Since the trucks were already full of shattered souls from the previous days, riders on the course that were thumbs down, asking for a lift were given some more water and told to keep on riding.
By lunch time though, I was feeling optimistic. We'd been told that the road cleaned up after the village just after lunch, so I'd be able to make good time and get to camp with plenty of time to do all the maintenance that I skipped the day before.
Well. Turns out that the road didn't clean up. It was patchy, rocky and corrugated all the way to the tar at 108km. I made a record number of coke stops. I had 6 soft drinks on the road. It is more relaxing than you think to sit in a dark, smoky Sudanese drink shop and talk to the locals while chugging whatever strange drinks they sell. The smell of Sudanese cigarettes doesn't even bug me anymore.
After another epic day on the bike, I made it to camp in Gallabat. Gallabat is the border town on the Sudanese-Ethiopia border. Tomorrow we have a non-race day (not sure why). I plan on taking it pretty easy to rest my shattered knees and get the infection in my throat under control.
At the moment, the injuries that I am carrying are starting to worry me a bit. I have two blown knees (be strange to have more than two?), a throat infection, bad arm pump from the corrugations and a corked thigh. Oh, and blisters on the heels of my palms and little toes. With the seven day stint, we are really not getting a chance to recover as much as we do when rest days are four days apart. Also, we normally get the whole afternoon leading into a rest day to mess around, cause we get into camp so quickly. This rest day coming up, that I need so badly, has a mando stage (one that you can't drop the time on) with 2500m on climbing. I doubt that I will be getting to camp any time in the morning, so I lose that rest time. And replace it with climbing.
In one of the rest stops today, one of the locals asked me "why are you doing this?" I had no answer for him.
First Day in Ethiopia
The first day in Ethiopia was also the first day with some real hills. 1000 odd metres over 98km. Not a real climb, but more than we have done so far. Tomorrow is 2500m, so it will be interesting to see how people go.
Today was a non-race day (I guess because of the Ethiopia border crossing) so we all got to take it pretty easy. Plenty of coke stops and rolling along. Even though we were moving along, it was a lot less stressful to not be thinking about how much time you were losing / gaining on the other people.
One more person dropped out of EFI today. I guess that it was the cumulative effect of the last couple of days. Pretty sad way to go out of the club though.
A good dozen or so people have left the tour temporarily and gone ahead to Gondor. A lot of people are pretty bummed out about how hard the tour has been.
In the past, the day before rest day has been auction day. A chance for the Indaba guys to get some beers for picking up after people that are: forgetful if you are feeling generous; or lazy if you aren't. They have had jack of it so much that there was no auction today. From now on, the truck will be swept out each night and people can start taking care of their own stuff. People have been pretty bad about keeping the trucks clean when they are riding them. I am kind of disappointed that riding the truck is so hard that you can't take your trash with you when you are done.
Funniest thing today: the timing system got screwed up and I became section leader somehow. To be rectified very shortly I imagine.
Mountain Camp to Gondor
Writing this checked into the Doha Hotel in Gondar. Pretty nice room as Africa goes. No electricity or hot water at the moment though.
The riding today was pretty interesting. Basically, we had a 13km warm up over some rolling hills, then climbed from 1250m to 2250m over 21km. No downhills in this section. Some bits are still gravel. This was good, because you could look from the bit of the road you were on up the hill way into the distance and see where you are going to end up. Bad because the reason you can see that is all the trucks and buses are kicking up bad to breathe dust.
Anyways, made it to the top without real incident, then dropped 500m over 25km down to lunch. Normal luncheons then rolling hills to Gondor at 109km and 2300m. The finish point is Hotel Goha which is at the top of a hill above the town. Pretty good view to glance at while drinking beer.
Ethiopia is crazily different looking than Sudan. Big, green hills and trees everywhere. They even have plenty of gum trees to make sure that Australians feel right at home. Some of the hills are quite steep sided, like the Blue Mountains or those things down in Mesa Verde. In fact, the whole place reminds me a bit of Mesa Verde. Same kind of hills and low, green vegetation. A lot more fun that to be riding through, instead of driving through it in a crappy mini-SUV.
The kids here are living up to their reputation. I had a couple of rocks and plants thrown at me. One little girl even threw a shoe at me. For some reason, that really annoyed me, so I stopped my bike and threw the shoe over some thorn bushes into a field. I felt a bit bad about it, but I am sure that it can be found.
The other thing kids do is run alongside asking for money. Apparently fat tourists on buses sprinkle money out the windows as they drive along. So now the kids are conditioned to think that we will give them money. Maybe that is why they throw rocks at us: they think if they score a direct hit we will explode in a shower of money and candy, pinata style.
One guy was pretty good. He just casually ran alongside me talking to me in pretty good English.
When I finished for the day I found out that the dinner truck had had a brake malfunction on one of the big descents. The guys are good drivers, so they managed to engine brake that beast to a stop. Bad news was that the dinner truck basically has no engine now.
Broken truck meant that our luggage had to be hauled up on a rented flat bed truck. Which meant that we had heaps of time to kill before we could shower and get changed. Most of us spent it sitting on the back patio looking down into the town and drinking beers.
Rest Day in Gondor
So. The broken down truck means that we are taking two whole rest days here in Gondor. Makes it a lot more relaxed. On a normal rest day, it is a bit of a scramble to get everything fixed and cleaned for riding the next day. Today, I don't really feel like I have to do much of anything. I did clean all the baked on powered off my bike that. That stuff dries like glue with sand stuck in it.
After seven days of riding, with some brutal days in the middle, I am definitely enjoying sitting down doing nothing. The long section has really taken a toll on people. We've had 3 concussions, a broken bone, plenty of saddle sores, the throat infection that is going around and heaps of other niggles. This was the longest stretch between rest days though, so hopefully our bodies will settle down a little and get back into a maintainable rhythm.
To make up for the extra rest day here, the plan is that our route from Addis to Nairobi will be shorter, so we will still get to there on time. Knowing the fun that the TDA likes to have, maybe they will just make us ride a little extra each day. That would be funny.
TDA organiser humour is a little bit of karmic evening up for me. Normally I am the one that gets to tell people that there are no more hills, or the road gets less bumpy, or it is only 1km to lunch. Now the shoe is firmly on the other foot and it is kicking me in the arse for sure. Luckily for me, I am wise to how this works, so I never quite believe anything in the rider briefings.
Ethiopian food back in Australia seems to be pretty authentic. It all tastes the same as it does over here. The only difference is that back in Australia the meat is 1000000 times better. Here it is a minefield of gristle and bone. It is Easter fasting time here though, so there is plenty of pretty good vegetarian food around. I had some Lamb Tibs and Fasting Ethiopian Meal for lunch. It was a pretty massive meal, but I felt so happy afterwards.
Rest Night in Gondor - In which I get attacked by Burgers.
I had a lot less luck with the food at a brewery we went to. The visit had been arranged by our local fixer, Windy, and the big draw was that we would get free beer. The brewery also did chips and burgers. Being pretty hungry still, we all had a couple of burgers and heaps of fries. I noticed that my burger was a bit pink but didn't think much about it.
As the night went on, I felt more and more bloated. By the time we left, my stomach was fricking huge. I should have recognised this as a pretty bad sign, but thought that I had just overeaten and needed to lie down.
By the time we got back to the hotel, I was definitely not feeling well. Those burgers smashed their way our of me like something out of Aliens. Food poisoning in the middle of Ethiopia with days more riding to do is not a pleasant prospect.
The good news is that my throat infection is almost gone, and all the blisters and other niggles have cleared up pretty well. We have only 2 days or riding to the next rest day, then another 5 days to the end of the section in Addis. It's not that I am counting down the days, I am just mindful of what demands I have to make on my body. The Bahir Dir to Addis section includes a mandatory day, which is the climb up out of the Blue Nile Gorge.
