Jambo is the Kenyan word for Hello...so Jambo everybody!
Have had a great day in Nairobi - looking around,drinking freshly squeezed mango juice, enjoying the hot and humid weather and generally just swanning about. Checked my email this morning,walked through Uhuru Park which is full of trees and massive in size. One of the people I spoke to in the park said it covered 50 acres. Not too sure how accurate he was but I tell you it's bloody big!!
I also went around the market stalls - how many wooden giraffes and Kenyan Kangas does one need? Having said that I was pleased that I had already been in Egypt, the land of persistent hassling by stall owners wanting you to buy their wares because when it came to say no to the Kenyan stall owners - it was easy. I got out of this huge market with only purchasing two Masai bracelets..that's good for me!!
Chris had a rest day yesterday in Yabello, southern Ethiopia and so he probably spent the day eating, cleaning his bike and maybe doing some washing. They race towards the Kenyan/Ethiopian border today from the desert camp in Yabello and will arrive in Moyale tomorrow. Moyale means the start of rubbish roads, the terrain changes to 'damn nasty roads, big rocks, potholes, lava' and in the words of Jack our race leader..'one of the toughest days in the entire tour will be in the next three days'. Ohh la la.......I'm sure there will be a few frustrating moments from some of the riders and maybe it will mean that the racers just ride. We'll have to wait and see.Personally, I can't see it happening..they're there to race. Eva will be able to just ride it but I doubt if the boys do.
I'm off to the Masai Mara area to do a safari in the morning and will be back Sunday to update the blog then off to Lamu. I hear California has rain...what's with that?
Hope you can all find your raincoats!!
Love ya
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Monday, February 26, 2007
Every Cloud Has a Silver Lining
Hi to family and friends,
Thanks for all the emails of encouragement, good wishes, concern and sympathy for my wrist injury ---(am I really so transparently competitive that you've needed to tell me not to cut the cast off?......hmm would you believe me if I said it had not crossed my mind ...I guess not! To be honest every hour of the day it pops into my head - especially now that Chris is not around to keep me on the straight and narrow path!!) OK, OK I can hear your exasperated sigh....no I won't cut the cast off - although it is a pain especially while trying to email with only an index finger on my right hand AND while trying to shampoo my golden locks with my left hand and trying to keep the right arm held high and out of the water!! The things a girl has to try and negotiate all in the aim of keeping clean!!!
Anyway..where am I? As the post title says 'every cloud has a silver lining'. If my right arm wasn't in a cast I wouldn't be here in Addis Ababa writing this email, hanging out with Kidist Getachew in the Wabe Shebelle Hotel drinking cups of tea and experiencing Ethiopia in the way that I am now. I have met her father who lives in a town 2 hours away called Nazareth (he popped in to say hello to her yesterday) and he like all fathers is concerned that his baby girl is living in the city by herself. He has reason to be concerned as Kidist is a very beautiful Ethiopian woman who looks like she has stepped out of a Vogue magazine - no makeup, yet breath takingly gorgeous. However, she is cool, modern and very together, full of vitality, vivacious and working in the internet office for hotel guests as a means to support her studying which she does at night (after work)for her IT degree.
Anyway,to back track I got the cast put on last Wednesday Feb 21st here in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and was told that it had to stay on for 4 weeks. That evening Chris started vomiting and had a bad stomach and was up all night and into the early morning getting rid of what ever bug he had picked up.It was obvious at 6.00am that there was no way he would be riding south with the group. He had really bad abdominal cramps and it wasn't until 1.00pm on Thursday that he could stand upright without his abdominal wall going into spasm. So, knowing that I could not ride and that Chris needed to get food inside him and recover we organised a driver and a car to take us south to Lake Langano which we knew the group would be at in two days time. It was a good move.
Lake Langano is a bird watchers paradise, secluded and private and nothing to do but read a book, swim (for Chris)and sleep. The hotel we stayed at was completely surrounded by trees, huge plumeria trees in full blossom which smelt gorgeous (which remided me of you Miss Holli - all I could see was your wedding ring) and so the birds flocked to the trees. Vibrant yellows, irridescent blues and greens, red breasted things, funky large black and white birds with these long beaks walking along the sandy shores of the lake..amazing! Lake Langano has so much mineral content in the lake that it is reddish in colour but still clean.
Our room was a little one bedroom cabin( #9) and the first thing we saw when we opened the door was the double bed completely covered with a huge mosquito net. Just as well. The minute the sun went down they were on attack. Big and ferocious looking mosquitos eager for blood. As you would guess, namely mine. The damn things landed on Chris, took one sniff and opted out..he's not sweet enough. As for me, they descended on any exposed skin, ears included and had a field day!! I looked like a mummy to start and now six days later I can still count all the bite marks. I had Neem insect repellant and they still had a feast.Thank god for malarone anti-malaria tablets that hopefully will do their job and protect.
So, on Friday we were hanging out at Lake Langano wondering where the group would be camping and low and behold I spot Pierre our French Canadian rider in his yellow cycling jersey riding his bike past the cabin. I asked where he had come from and he pointed behind him. There in the trees at the end of the beach was Betsy and Doris the African Routes support trucks!! As luck would have it, we had all ended up at the same hotel/camp site. Brilliant coincidence. It was good to see everybody and after many hugs and hellos my clean cast quickly lost it's pristine, virginal whiteness when Vimpey from African Routes..driver of Doris and all round good guy..who was doing maintenance engine work under the truck got up and placed his oily paw on the cast and to this day I have his fingerprints!! Darrel from South Africa joined in and continued the cverage of my cast when he wrote- 'two months to do the other one, bon chance Wratty xxxx'- his sense of humour really is unique and he's lots of fun, George a honey from Holland wrote 'Janet fan', Eva also from Holland wrote 'Heal sister! 'cause I need you with the boys' which was really lovely. She is the only woman still racing and it will be good once my wrist heals and we can be back racing each other. We were laughing together about how hard it is to keep up with the top four - Chris and Adrie, Gunther and Eric. We can hang with them for about 30 - 45 minutes if they are doing tempo pace but once they decide to attack or a huge hill comes up it's usually Chris or Gunther to go off the front and now the pace just escalates. You tend to hang on as long as you can and breath out your back side but you know it is inevitable that they are going to drop you. Some of the days that Eva and I have managed to get good times, close to the top four is because they have decide to take it easy or there is a massive tail wind or we just killed ourselves trying to stay with them. It's also fun racing the tandem. They are strong on the flats but slow (understandably) on the hills of Ethiopia and so we can get away in the climbs and just kill ourselves to stay ahead in the straight home. Can you tell I miss it already!! When I look back it amazes me how I still managed to ride with my wrist for 20 days and still win the stages. Now that the cast is on and the constant pain has gone..yes Suzi..I can hear you...I realise I shouldn't have ignored it..stubborn huh!
Anyway, enough of that. Saturday 24th was day one for me in the truck watching the riders, knowing that there was no way I could ride as I could not hold the handle bar with my cast. You know I tried! The othopod built up the plaster on the lateral side of my right hand and to the mid line of my palm. This bridge prevents me from getting my fingers around the hoods and doesn't provide enough room for me to move the shifters!! He had my number didn't he!! So after day one, in the truck, watching the riders, watching Chris's sprint finish to Ardrie..it was was a close loss of 4 inches for Chris but he sent a message to Ardrie that he's getting better on those tight finishes....watching did my head in! I put a brave face on for all the group but when I was with Chris in the afternoon I just lost it. I was upset and so at Chris's suggestion he said to just leave the group, go somewhere for 15 days, chill, heal and not be there watching them all race and to join back up with them in Nairobi. The roads in Northern Kenya are rough, desolate and known to have bandits and not a place for a woman to hitch a ride I back tracked to Addis. Sunday my side adventure in Africa started.
I caught a mini bus from Dilla, a southern Ethiopian town with a guy who was going to Shasamene 200km away. Talk about 'silver lining'. I had a blast. In the South of Ethiopia the main crop is Chad which is similar to Peru's coca. It is a legal stimulant which only grows south of Sashamene which is the Rastafarian stronghold of Ethiopia and the place where Bob Marley hung out, Haille Sellassie came from and so a good market for chad. When we went through Shasamene on Saturday on the truck, we stopped at a gas station to get water and it just happened to be next to the Rasta Tabernacle. I jumped out and within seconds my cast caught the young Rastas attention and I was promptly offered weed/hootch/dac as the best option to heal my wrist. It was classic. Had me in fits of laughter. They all had the rasta cloths and hats and were intrigued that we were there. When Chris went past with the racers, he was in the front of the group and saw me on the side of the road surrounded by Rastas and he yelled out 'stay off the weed'. As you can imagine this caused an uproar and they loved it. It also renewed the offers for me to buy a stash from them. Nels from Canada is a huge Bob Marley fan and was riding with a Bob Marley tshirt over his cycling cloths. He was on the back end of Chris's group and so when the young Rastas saw his tshirt they went beserk. When I told them that I had seen Bob Marley in concert in Auckland in the early 80's that was it...instant street cred..not that I needed it but they left me alone and stopped trying to sell me weed.
So Shasamene is true Rasta. The driver of the minibus stopped at many small villages between Dila and Shasamene and picked up Chad. Huge bundles that he put on the roof. He told me that the large bundles could get as much as 800-900 Birr whcih is about $100 US dollars..a lot of money in Ethiopian standards especially for the villages. They cultivate it in the south as there is lots of water and rainfall. As you move south from Lake Langano the terain changes to savannah, them to volcanic masses and then luxuriant greenery, banana trees, pineapple trees of the Rift Valley. It's beautiful to see and if it wasn't for the maniac kids lining the sides of the streets with sticks and rocks it would be a blast to ride. We all said that Ethiopia would be better if the Ethiopian children had the Sudanese manner and persona.
So as we were getting closer to Shasamene we had to stop at a weighing station where all the chad came off, got weighed, official men wrote down the weight, money
changed hands, invoices given and the chad was put back on the minivan. Apparently we were leaving one area and a tax had to be paid. When we got to Shasamene the chad was delivered to some back street and I caught a local bus to Addis.
The local bus cost 33Birr - divide that by 8 - so $4 US dollars to travel another 200km. I luckily had a seat and the bus was supposed to have 25 people. It was Sunday which meant that the traffic contollers would not be working and so they jammed 12 more pople in. They were standing, sitting on little wooden stools in the middle of the aisle, up the front on the floor..it was a real laugh. After a 4.5 hour bus ride I arrived in Addis and came to the Wabe Shebelle Hotel.
So..where to go, what to do? I thought about flying to Madagascar but found out that there is a Tropical Cyclone about to hit the island so decided not to go plus I would have had to fly to Joberg and go from there for a cost of $2,000US plus...crazy money. I also thought of going to Lalibella in Northern Ethiopia to see the underground monastery and churches but there were no flights until the 2nd of March. So, today I fly to Nairobi, Kenya and will stay in a hotel and try and organise a 4-5 day safari trip as well as go to Lamu Island, a beach resort off the coast of Kenya. In the early 80's I met a Brit called Bernie on a beach in Bali and he was cycling around the world. I rode with him through parts of Java and we kept in contact for years after as he wrote a book about his cycling adventures. He sent me a postcard saying that he had fell in love with a place called Lamu and what was supposed to be a short break turned in to a long stay of several months. Since then I have always wondered what the magic of Lamu was as he seemed so hell bent on completing the adventure and getting it done. So..I will find out and tell you all things going well. Yesterday, I got to see the Addis I didn't see while I was going to clinics and it's a cool place.
I have to go out to the airport as my flight leaves in a couple of hours. I hope this solves the mystery of why my name is not on the stage winner list anymore and I will get Rachel to take a photo of the cast to prove to those concerned that it is still firmly fixed on my arm..Michelle!
Hello to our clients, hope Richard and Michelle are keeping you fired up..(we know they are). I did think about flying back to the states to work with my cast but that was in a moment of weakness and it lasted all of a couple of seconds. I slapped myself to make sure it didn't enter my head again..you guys are in good hands.
Once again, thanks for all the emails, it's been great to receive them and we appreciate how much we are loved by you all.You guys rock! Be well, take care..do you think my hotel in Nairobi has a spa? I'll do some research for you Charlotte....my sister in New Zealand is GM of a fabulous-to-be-spa at Waiwera, a thermal hot springs resort in Auckland. I'll collect some brochures........
Love ya
Team Maund - racing in Southern Ethiopia heading for Northern Kenya...Team Alexander swanning in Africa...healing injury
Thanks for all the emails of encouragement, good wishes, concern and sympathy for my wrist injury ---(am I really so transparently competitive that you've needed to tell me not to cut the cast off?......hmm would you believe me if I said it had not crossed my mind ...I guess not! To be honest every hour of the day it pops into my head - especially now that Chris is not around to keep me on the straight and narrow path!!) OK, OK I can hear your exasperated sigh....no I won't cut the cast off - although it is a pain especially while trying to email with only an index finger on my right hand AND while trying to shampoo my golden locks with my left hand and trying to keep the right arm held high and out of the water!! The things a girl has to try and negotiate all in the aim of keeping clean!!!
Anyway..where am I? As the post title says 'every cloud has a silver lining'. If my right arm wasn't in a cast I wouldn't be here in Addis Ababa writing this email, hanging out with Kidist Getachew in the Wabe Shebelle Hotel drinking cups of tea and experiencing Ethiopia in the way that I am now. I have met her father who lives in a town 2 hours away called Nazareth (he popped in to say hello to her yesterday) and he like all fathers is concerned that his baby girl is living in the city by herself. He has reason to be concerned as Kidist is a very beautiful Ethiopian woman who looks like she has stepped out of a Vogue magazine - no makeup, yet breath takingly gorgeous. However, she is cool, modern and very together, full of vitality, vivacious and working in the internet office for hotel guests as a means to support her studying which she does at night (after work)for her IT degree.
Anyway,to back track I got the cast put on last Wednesday Feb 21st here in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and was told that it had to stay on for 4 weeks. That evening Chris started vomiting and had a bad stomach and was up all night and into the early morning getting rid of what ever bug he had picked up.It was obvious at 6.00am that there was no way he would be riding south with the group. He had really bad abdominal cramps and it wasn't until 1.00pm on Thursday that he could stand upright without his abdominal wall going into spasm. So, knowing that I could not ride and that Chris needed to get food inside him and recover we organised a driver and a car to take us south to Lake Langano which we knew the group would be at in two days time. It was a good move.
Lake Langano is a bird watchers paradise, secluded and private and nothing to do but read a book, swim (for Chris)and sleep. The hotel we stayed at was completely surrounded by trees, huge plumeria trees in full blossom which smelt gorgeous (which remided me of you Miss Holli - all I could see was your wedding ring) and so the birds flocked to the trees. Vibrant yellows, irridescent blues and greens, red breasted things, funky large black and white birds with these long beaks walking along the sandy shores of the lake..amazing! Lake Langano has so much mineral content in the lake that it is reddish in colour but still clean.
Our room was a little one bedroom cabin( #9) and the first thing we saw when we opened the door was the double bed completely covered with a huge mosquito net. Just as well. The minute the sun went down they were on attack. Big and ferocious looking mosquitos eager for blood. As you would guess, namely mine. The damn things landed on Chris, took one sniff and opted out..he's not sweet enough. As for me, they descended on any exposed skin, ears included and had a field day!! I looked like a mummy to start and now six days later I can still count all the bite marks. I had Neem insect repellant and they still had a feast.Thank god for malarone anti-malaria tablets that hopefully will do their job and protect.
So, on Friday we were hanging out at Lake Langano wondering where the group would be camping and low and behold I spot Pierre our French Canadian rider in his yellow cycling jersey riding his bike past the cabin. I asked where he had come from and he pointed behind him. There in the trees at the end of the beach was Betsy and Doris the African Routes support trucks!! As luck would have it, we had all ended up at the same hotel/camp site. Brilliant coincidence. It was good to see everybody and after many hugs and hellos my clean cast quickly lost it's pristine, virginal whiteness when Vimpey from African Routes..driver of Doris and all round good guy..who was doing maintenance engine work under the truck got up and placed his oily paw on the cast and to this day I have his fingerprints!! Darrel from South Africa joined in and continued the cverage of my cast when he wrote- 'two months to do the other one, bon chance Wratty xxxx'- his sense of humour really is unique and he's lots of fun, George a honey from Holland wrote 'Janet fan', Eva also from Holland wrote 'Heal sister! 'cause I need you with the boys' which was really lovely. She is the only woman still racing and it will be good once my wrist heals and we can be back racing each other. We were laughing together about how hard it is to keep up with the top four - Chris and Adrie, Gunther and Eric. We can hang with them for about 30 - 45 minutes if they are doing tempo pace but once they decide to attack or a huge hill comes up it's usually Chris or Gunther to go off the front and now the pace just escalates. You tend to hang on as long as you can and breath out your back side but you know it is inevitable that they are going to drop you. Some of the days that Eva and I have managed to get good times, close to the top four is because they have decide to take it easy or there is a massive tail wind or we just killed ourselves trying to stay with them. It's also fun racing the tandem. They are strong on the flats but slow (understandably) on the hills of Ethiopia and so we can get away in the climbs and just kill ourselves to stay ahead in the straight home. Can you tell I miss it already!! When I look back it amazes me how I still managed to ride with my wrist for 20 days and still win the stages. Now that the cast is on and the constant pain has gone..yes Suzi..I can hear you...I realise I shouldn't have ignored it..stubborn huh!
Anyway, enough of that. Saturday 24th was day one for me in the truck watching the riders, knowing that there was no way I could ride as I could not hold the handle bar with my cast. You know I tried! The othopod built up the plaster on the lateral side of my right hand and to the mid line of my palm. This bridge prevents me from getting my fingers around the hoods and doesn't provide enough room for me to move the shifters!! He had my number didn't he!! So after day one, in the truck, watching the riders, watching Chris's sprint finish to Ardrie..it was was a close loss of 4 inches for Chris but he sent a message to Ardrie that he's getting better on those tight finishes....watching did my head in! I put a brave face on for all the group but when I was with Chris in the afternoon I just lost it. I was upset and so at Chris's suggestion he said to just leave the group, go somewhere for 15 days, chill, heal and not be there watching them all race and to join back up with them in Nairobi. The roads in Northern Kenya are rough, desolate and known to have bandits and not a place for a woman to hitch a ride I back tracked to Addis. Sunday my side adventure in Africa started.
I caught a mini bus from Dilla, a southern Ethiopian town with a guy who was going to Shasamene 200km away. Talk about 'silver lining'. I had a blast. In the South of Ethiopia the main crop is Chad which is similar to Peru's coca. It is a legal stimulant which only grows south of Sashamene which is the Rastafarian stronghold of Ethiopia and the place where Bob Marley hung out, Haille Sellassie came from and so a good market for chad. When we went through Shasamene on Saturday on the truck, we stopped at a gas station to get water and it just happened to be next to the Rasta Tabernacle. I jumped out and within seconds my cast caught the young Rastas attention and I was promptly offered weed/hootch/dac as the best option to heal my wrist. It was classic. Had me in fits of laughter. They all had the rasta cloths and hats and were intrigued that we were there. When Chris went past with the racers, he was in the front of the group and saw me on the side of the road surrounded by Rastas and he yelled out 'stay off the weed'. As you can imagine this caused an uproar and they loved it. It also renewed the offers for me to buy a stash from them. Nels from Canada is a huge Bob Marley fan and was riding with a Bob Marley tshirt over his cycling cloths. He was on the back end of Chris's group and so when the young Rastas saw his tshirt they went beserk. When I told them that I had seen Bob Marley in concert in Auckland in the early 80's that was it...instant street cred..not that I needed it but they left me alone and stopped trying to sell me weed.
So Shasamene is true Rasta. The driver of the minibus stopped at many small villages between Dila and Shasamene and picked up Chad. Huge bundles that he put on the roof. He told me that the large bundles could get as much as 800-900 Birr whcih is about $100 US dollars..a lot of money in Ethiopian standards especially for the villages. They cultivate it in the south as there is lots of water and rainfall. As you move south from Lake Langano the terain changes to savannah, them to volcanic masses and then luxuriant greenery, banana trees, pineapple trees of the Rift Valley. It's beautiful to see and if it wasn't for the maniac kids lining the sides of the streets with sticks and rocks it would be a blast to ride. We all said that Ethiopia would be better if the Ethiopian children had the Sudanese manner and persona.
So as we were getting closer to Shasamene we had to stop at a weighing station where all the chad came off, got weighed, official men wrote down the weight, money
changed hands, invoices given and the chad was put back on the minivan. Apparently we were leaving one area and a tax had to be paid. When we got to Shasamene the chad was delivered to some back street and I caught a local bus to Addis.
The local bus cost 33Birr - divide that by 8 - so $4 US dollars to travel another 200km. I luckily had a seat and the bus was supposed to have 25 people. It was Sunday which meant that the traffic contollers would not be working and so they jammed 12 more pople in. They were standing, sitting on little wooden stools in the middle of the aisle, up the front on the floor..it was a real laugh. After a 4.5 hour bus ride I arrived in Addis and came to the Wabe Shebelle Hotel.
So..where to go, what to do? I thought about flying to Madagascar but found out that there is a Tropical Cyclone about to hit the island so decided not to go plus I would have had to fly to Joberg and go from there for a cost of $2,000US plus...crazy money. I also thought of going to Lalibella in Northern Ethiopia to see the underground monastery and churches but there were no flights until the 2nd of March. So, today I fly to Nairobi, Kenya and will stay in a hotel and try and organise a 4-5 day safari trip as well as go to Lamu Island, a beach resort off the coast of Kenya. In the early 80's I met a Brit called Bernie on a beach in Bali and he was cycling around the world. I rode with him through parts of Java and we kept in contact for years after as he wrote a book about his cycling adventures. He sent me a postcard saying that he had fell in love with a place called Lamu and what was supposed to be a short break turned in to a long stay of several months. Since then I have always wondered what the magic of Lamu was as he seemed so hell bent on completing the adventure and getting it done. So..I will find out and tell you all things going well. Yesterday, I got to see the Addis I didn't see while I was going to clinics and it's a cool place.
I have to go out to the airport as my flight leaves in a couple of hours. I hope this solves the mystery of why my name is not on the stage winner list anymore and I will get Rachel to take a photo of the cast to prove to those concerned that it is still firmly fixed on my arm..Michelle!
Hello to our clients, hope Richard and Michelle are keeping you fired up..(we know they are). I did think about flying back to the states to work with my cast but that was in a moment of weakness and it lasted all of a couple of seconds. I slapped myself to make sure it didn't enter my head again..you guys are in good hands.
Once again, thanks for all the emails, it's been great to receive them and we appreciate how much we are loved by you all.You guys rock! Be well, take care..do you think my hotel in Nairobi has a spa? I'll do some research for you Charlotte....my sister in New Zealand is GM of a fabulous-to-be-spa at Waiwera, a thermal hot springs resort in Auckland. I'll collect some brochures........
Love ya
Team Maund - racing in Southern Ethiopia heading for Northern Kenya...Team Alexander swanning in Africa...healing injury
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Calling Miss Suzi - the girl is injured..race over!
OK......to friends and family and chekkies in New Zealand,I need to find Miss Suzi. I know she was teaching level three in the States some time back BUT she needs to be here, with me in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia!!! It's all about me honey!!! Suzi .. I need your expertise in moving bones...I am injured!!! I need your miracle hands and I was wondering if you could pop over to do a spot of treatment. How about it? We can get you and the boy a room at the Sheraton Addis, combine it with an little altitude training, there's a nice bar by the pool for you both to hang out at, nice shops, restaurants...cute shoes..etc etc. Need a break from NZ..come to Ethiopia!! It would be such fun..you don't need to ride...............
Seriously, my race is all but over. I found out yesterday that my sprained wrist is more than sprained! My injury and fall in Dongolar, Sudan 3 weeks ago wasn't a sprain but a hair line fracture of the distal end of the ulna and a massive separation of all the bones in the wrist and after an Xray and consulation with a orthopod bone specialist, who just happened to be in Addis this week..I get to have a plaster cast put on this afternoon!! The descent down the Blue Nile Gorge re-injured, aggravated my wrist and so with the 1300m drop in height and 18km of shitty, rough, off road, rocky, pothole, gravel..get the picture..nasty roads my hand was numb and full of pins and needles and I could not hold on to the handle bars of my bike.
I tried to ride for about 20 minutes in the uphill time trial, but it just got worse. I had to get on the bucky..one of the support trucks and so got an automatic 12 hour penalty added to my time. I tried to ride the next day but couldn't and so my race is all but over. To answer all the emails asking why I wasn't winning all the stages here's why. Of the last 11 stages of the section from Khartoum to Addis Ababa I raced five days and won the stages on those days but I did not race six days,I was sitting on my butt with not a happy face, in the truck--three days due to vomitting and stomach issues and three due to my wrist, so consequently the section win went to Eva..stage wins being 6 to Eva, 5 to me. From now on I will only be riding the tarmac days and on the off road days in Northern Kenya I will be in the truck..which means I will get 12 hour penalties for all of those days BUT my wrist will heal and in the words on the orthpod 'you will not have permanent damage and it will not become chronic'. I have to have my wrist in a plaster cast for three weeks so sorry to the fan club for not being able to stick it to the metal!!!
On the other hand Chris the dish had a superb uphill time trial!!! The bonus of being in the support truck was watching Chris just nail the hill. 23km of up hill 1300m climb off road. You should have seen that billy goat go. He clearly won it in 1 hour and 39 minutes which is an amazing time...(although Chris being Chris wanted to do it in 1 hour and 30 minutes) and he was two minutes ahead of the second person which was Gunther. His legs were on fire on that day and it was great to watch.
Chris checked us into the swanky Sheraton Addis last night and so the bummer of having to get my wrist in plaster was buffered by the fabulous room, the big bath with hot, hot water and the large glass of South African Pinotage that I consumed to drown my sorrows!! I have to go and get this damn plaster..I'll get back to you later.Trust you are all well. Ethiopia is an amazing country and we will defintely be coming back to visit ti again.
Love ya.
Seriously, my race is all but over. I found out yesterday that my sprained wrist is more than sprained! My injury and fall in Dongolar, Sudan 3 weeks ago wasn't a sprain but a hair line fracture of the distal end of the ulna and a massive separation of all the bones in the wrist and after an Xray and consulation with a orthopod bone specialist, who just happened to be in Addis this week..I get to have a plaster cast put on this afternoon!! The descent down the Blue Nile Gorge re-injured, aggravated my wrist and so with the 1300m drop in height and 18km of shitty, rough, off road, rocky, pothole, gravel..get the picture..nasty roads my hand was numb and full of pins and needles and I could not hold on to the handle bars of my bike.
I tried to ride for about 20 minutes in the uphill time trial, but it just got worse. I had to get on the bucky..one of the support trucks and so got an automatic 12 hour penalty added to my time. I tried to ride the next day but couldn't and so my race is all but over. To answer all the emails asking why I wasn't winning all the stages here's why. Of the last 11 stages of the section from Khartoum to Addis Ababa I raced five days and won the stages on those days but I did not race six days,I was sitting on my butt with not a happy face, in the truck--three days due to vomitting and stomach issues and three due to my wrist, so consequently the section win went to Eva..stage wins being 6 to Eva, 5 to me. From now on I will only be riding the tarmac days and on the off road days in Northern Kenya I will be in the truck..which means I will get 12 hour penalties for all of those days BUT my wrist will heal and in the words on the orthpod 'you will not have permanent damage and it will not become chronic'. I have to have my wrist in a plaster cast for three weeks so sorry to the fan club for not being able to stick it to the metal!!!
On the other hand Chris the dish had a superb uphill time trial!!! The bonus of being in the support truck was watching Chris just nail the hill. 23km of up hill 1300m climb off road. You should have seen that billy goat go. He clearly won it in 1 hour and 39 minutes which is an amazing time...(although Chris being Chris wanted to do it in 1 hour and 30 minutes) and he was two minutes ahead of the second person which was Gunther. His legs were on fire on that day and it was great to watch.
Chris checked us into the swanky Sheraton Addis last night and so the bummer of having to get my wrist in plaster was buffered by the fabulous room, the big bath with hot, hot water and the large glass of South African Pinotage that I consumed to drown my sorrows!! I have to go and get this damn plaster..I'll get back to you later.Trust you are all well. Ethiopia is an amazing country and we will defintely be coming back to visit ti again.
Love ya.
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Happy Valentines Day from Africa
Hi there,
Forgot to wish you all Happy Valentines Day. We have a fancy dress party tonight where we are supposed to be dressed in something starting with 'P'. I could be a princess but have decided to leave that one for Chris and I'll probably go as a Prada girl. Have the hand bag Sue and Michelle so that will have to be it!!!
I'll try and get another post up in the morning. We head for Addis Ababa day after next and it is going to be a tough 6 day section as we have an uphill 23km off road time trial in the Blue Nile Gorge. At least we have a hotel booked in Addis and so I can be guaranteed of a bath at the end of it all. Small pleasures.
Happy Valentines my lovelies!!!
Forgot to wish you all Happy Valentines Day. We have a fancy dress party tonight where we are supposed to be dressed in something starting with 'P'. I could be a princess but have decided to leave that one for Chris and I'll probably go as a Prada girl. Have the hand bag Sue and Michelle so that will have to be it!!!
I'll try and get another post up in the morning. We head for Addis Ababa day after next and it is going to be a tough 6 day section as we have an uphill 23km off road time trial in the Blue Nile Gorge. At least we have a hotel booked in Addis and so I can be guaranteed of a bath at the end of it all. Small pleasures.
Happy Valentines my lovelies!!!
Close the gap - No, I'm going to vomit!!!
Hello to family and friends,
Hope you are all well. Chris and I are both recovering and the past two days have been good for Team Alexander/Maund. I won both of the last two stages, rolling hills and nice climbs in Northern Ethiopia so the billy goat legs were pulled out for the ride. Chris had a great race yesterday and won the stage by 5 minutes...mountain goat Maund on display, today he got away on the climbs but it came down to a sprint finish as the last 5 kms were downhill and flat. The last part of the road was not so stable a road surface plus we had to go through a small market type area so add a couple of straying cows, goats, people on bikes and taxi vans stopping for passengers with the drivers watching two guys scream past at race pace so Chris was pipped at the finish for the stage win although he was given the same time.We are now in a lake town called Bahar Dar on the edge of Lake Tana which is the source of the Blue Nile. We have opted to stay in a hotel which is great for the soul, shower, bed, restaurant food...already had griled chicken for lunch and so we are clean, well fed and happy!!!!!
I guess you have all been wondering where we have been and why we havent posted a blog since Feb 4! Two reasons....one being the title of this post and two, not being able to get an internet connection in Gondar, Ethiopia where we had two well deserved rest days.
So, after our good hotel stay in Khartoum, Sudan we headed to the border town of Metema. First day out of Khartoum I had a good race and won the stage. Everything was going well. The Sudanese Cycling Federation provided lunch and we were camped in an old amusement park. They were also supposed to give us dinner but their idea of food wasn't appropriate fro a bunch of riders who had jusat ridden 150km in 45 degrees celcius weather. Pastries and milk!!! Ahhhhhhhh...no! We all decided to go into this l;ittle village and see what we could find to eat at about 8.00pm. Bad move on my part. I ate a falafel whcih seemed ok at the time BUT next morning 20km into the ride, I was struggling. I was falling off the back and Chris who was behind me yelled out to me to close the gap as I was going to lose the front group. He didn't know that at that precise moment I was having abdominal cramps from hell, felt weak and then....I knew I was going to be sick. I yelled out to him, "No, I'm going to vomit". His timing was perfect, he passed me on my left just as I turned my head to the right and produced a projectile missile!!! So....did I keep on riding and show my stubborn side? or did I act sensibly and quit. Thankfully, a German guy who had just finished cycling in Egypt and Sudan pulled up in a van and asked one of the TDA riders called Markus if everything was OK. Obviously I was in bits and so I hitched a ride to the lunch truck with him. Nurse Elaine from Canada gave me some anti - be sick pills and I spent the rest of the day asleep under the lunch truck in a world of sickness and delerium! I didn't ride the next day and consequently got two 12 hour penalties. I didn't really care about the penalty, all I wanted was the two way trafffic of food to stop....ended up coming out both ends, lost a bit of weight but thankfully the two days rest in Gondar allowed recovery. The third day after the sickness I rode but didn't race as it was the day of the ride to the border of Sudan and Ethiopia which was another 45 degrees celcius day.
The border of Sudan and Ethiopia will always be memorable. You get your Sudanese exit stamp in one building, walk across a bridge and go to a purple shack to get your Ethiopian entry visa. The chidren of Ethiopia are so excited to see you that they work themselves into a frenzy and we have been warned to watch out for stick and rock throwing as they get so excited!!! At our camp site we had hoards of kids just hanging out and watching us. I guess we must look like a right freak show!!
Our first day of riding in Ethioia was a non race day as we had to get used to the off roads again. It was a long day and my wrist suffered horribly. It swelled up and so I was not able to ride from the desert camp to Gondar. Just as well. I was on one of the support vechiles and we had stopped at one of the small villages to get water when a large two trailer truck pulls up. I saw a race number on a bike on top of the truck and then realised that it was Chris's number. It was his turn to be sick and had no energy. Being stubborn as he is, he said that he would ride on Doris, our big bumpy truck. I jumped on with him and less than 5 minutes ..guess who was being sick out the window and had to buy beers for Vimpey the driver as a penalty for the mess!!! YOu guessed it Christopher. Once we got to Gondar, we got a hotel room and to bed he went. His bug was 24 hours and the two rest days allowed for us to let our system settle. I think the whoe group has had some sort of bug to date so fingers crossed that this is the end of it.
I have to go and eat again.
Be well.
Love ya
Hope you are all well. Chris and I are both recovering and the past two days have been good for Team Alexander/Maund. I won both of the last two stages, rolling hills and nice climbs in Northern Ethiopia so the billy goat legs were pulled out for the ride. Chris had a great race yesterday and won the stage by 5 minutes...mountain goat Maund on display, today he got away on the climbs but it came down to a sprint finish as the last 5 kms were downhill and flat. The last part of the road was not so stable a road surface plus we had to go through a small market type area so add a couple of straying cows, goats, people on bikes and taxi vans stopping for passengers with the drivers watching two guys scream past at race pace so Chris was pipped at the finish for the stage win although he was given the same time.We are now in a lake town called Bahar Dar on the edge of Lake Tana which is the source of the Blue Nile. We have opted to stay in a hotel which is great for the soul, shower, bed, restaurant food...already had griled chicken for lunch and so we are clean, well fed and happy!!!!!
I guess you have all been wondering where we have been and why we havent posted a blog since Feb 4! Two reasons....one being the title of this post and two, not being able to get an internet connection in Gondar, Ethiopia where we had two well deserved rest days.
So, after our good hotel stay in Khartoum, Sudan we headed to the border town of Metema. First day out of Khartoum I had a good race and won the stage. Everything was going well. The Sudanese Cycling Federation provided lunch and we were camped in an old amusement park. They were also supposed to give us dinner but their idea of food wasn't appropriate fro a bunch of riders who had jusat ridden 150km in 45 degrees celcius weather. Pastries and milk!!! Ahhhhhhhh...no! We all decided to go into this l;ittle village and see what we could find to eat at about 8.00pm. Bad move on my part. I ate a falafel whcih seemed ok at the time BUT next morning 20km into the ride, I was struggling. I was falling off the back and Chris who was behind me yelled out to me to close the gap as I was going to lose the front group. He didn't know that at that precise moment I was having abdominal cramps from hell, felt weak and then....I knew I was going to be sick. I yelled out to him, "No, I'm going to vomit". His timing was perfect, he passed me on my left just as I turned my head to the right and produced a projectile missile!!! So....did I keep on riding and show my stubborn side? or did I act sensibly and quit. Thankfully, a German guy who had just finished cycling in Egypt and Sudan pulled up in a van and asked one of the TDA riders called Markus if everything was OK. Obviously I was in bits and so I hitched a ride to the lunch truck with him. Nurse Elaine from Canada gave me some anti - be sick pills and I spent the rest of the day asleep under the lunch truck in a world of sickness and delerium! I didn't ride the next day and consequently got two 12 hour penalties. I didn't really care about the penalty, all I wanted was the two way trafffic of food to stop....ended up coming out both ends, lost a bit of weight but thankfully the two days rest in Gondar allowed recovery. The third day after the sickness I rode but didn't race as it was the day of the ride to the border of Sudan and Ethiopia which was another 45 degrees celcius day.
The border of Sudan and Ethiopia will always be memorable. You get your Sudanese exit stamp in one building, walk across a bridge and go to a purple shack to get your Ethiopian entry visa. The chidren of Ethiopia are so excited to see you that they work themselves into a frenzy and we have been warned to watch out for stick and rock throwing as they get so excited!!! At our camp site we had hoards of kids just hanging out and watching us. I guess we must look like a right freak show!!
Our first day of riding in Ethioia was a non race day as we had to get used to the off roads again. It was a long day and my wrist suffered horribly. It swelled up and so I was not able to ride from the desert camp to Gondar. Just as well. I was on one of the support vechiles and we had stopped at one of the small villages to get water when a large two trailer truck pulls up. I saw a race number on a bike on top of the truck and then realised that it was Chris's number. It was his turn to be sick and had no energy. Being stubborn as he is, he said that he would ride on Doris, our big bumpy truck. I jumped on with him and less than 5 minutes ..guess who was being sick out the window and had to buy beers for Vimpey the driver as a penalty for the mess!!! YOu guessed it Christopher. Once we got to Gondar, we got a hotel room and to bed he went. His bug was 24 hours and the two rest days allowed for us to let our system settle. I think the whoe group has had some sort of bug to date so fingers crossed that this is the end of it.
I have to go and eat again.
Be well.
Love ya
Sunday, February 4, 2007
US Friends
Hey,
Just realised that it is Superbowl Sunday in the States and so have a great day and a great party day if you are doing the BBQ thing. Miss Holli I'm sure you will be doing the Superbowl Party thing with Tim. Hope you all have a good time. Sudan is alcohol free and so have a glass of wine for us. Our Tour Leader is from San Diego and so the two of us were trying to figure out how we could find out who wins. The game doesn't start until 4.00am our time and so we're not going to be able to hit an internet cafe..they open at 7.00am and we start racing in the morning so it's a no go. Anyway, have fun.
Cheers
Team Alexander/Maund
Just realised that it is Superbowl Sunday in the States and so have a great day and a great party day if you are doing the BBQ thing. Miss Holli I'm sure you will be doing the Superbowl Party thing with Tim. Hope you all have a good time. Sudan is alcohol free and so have a glass of wine for us. Our Tour Leader is from San Diego and so the two of us were trying to figure out how we could find out who wins. The game doesn't start until 4.00am our time and so we're not going to be able to hit an internet cafe..they open at 7.00am and we start racing in the morning so it's a no go. Anyway, have fun.
Cheers
Team Alexander/Maund
Rest Day in Khartoum
Hi there,
I tell ya there is something sweet about sleeping on a good bed after a couple of weeks of sleeping on a thermarest mattress, in a tent in the desert!! We both slept well and when the Imans started their call to prayer chants at six am we were already awake and ready to go. My day started as it finished last night with another bath and then a huge breakfast. Chris and I then went to the local supermarket and stocked up on protein - tins of fish and beef as the protein provided by the tour is pretty non existant at breakfast (oats, porridge, bread and jam and now that we are in Sudan only one egg breakfast so far). Lunch is ok and our dinners are amazing but we need food to start the day. So for Chris and I who usually have to eat a cow for breakfast when doing as much exercise as we currently are, it means that on our rest day we forage and stock up on protein in any form that we can find it. Today we found salted cashews, a variety of cheeses, fish, beef and so two happy campers!!!!
With that task out of the way, we then went to the National Museum of Sudan which was way cool. They have three buildings which look like small airplane hangers in the grounds and each one has a reconstructed temple taken from the land under what is now Lake Nasr, dating back to 1550-1295BC. Unbelievable stuff. What is bizarre is that on these most amazing historic and archeologically rare hunks of stone, not only are there hieroglyphics and covered with paintings of Egyptian gods but there's also graffiti from the 1800's carved into the stone. Barstards!!!! You can even walk up to the temples and stangely enough are able to touch them which to me is quite odd. Surely if eveybody touches them, they'll gradually disintegrate or am I too used to living in the states where everything has to be locked down otherwise it will get lifted!! Inside the museum itself there were artifacts dating back 5,000 years. The ancient jewelry was a blast to see and I must admit I had a small princess moment when I saw all the armlets and gold headgear. Not as practical as a bike helmet which I'm in more need of right now.
After the Museum we checked out where the Blue and the White Nile converge at the White Nile bridge. The White Nile isn't actually white but instead a shitty grey colour but the Blue Nile is so blue in comparision that it makes the White Nile look less grey! Does that make sense? We couldn't take photos as there were police around and you have to have a permit to take photos in the more populated parts of Sudan, so you'll have to take my word for it.
After another huge lunch...(stocking up the calories in preparation of a six day stage which starts tomorrow) we both sorted out our 'red boxes'. The tour has a system where everybody has a red box and a permanent bag. The red boxes go inside 'Doris truck' and in it we place all the things that we will need for each stage which can be anywhere from 5 to 7 days. In it you'll find things like the tent, a sleeping bag, thermarest, clothes for riding, casual clothes when not riding, toilet bag,first aid kit etc and spare bike bits that we may need during the stage. In the permanent bag is all the other stuff that we may need for later countries like rain gear for Malawi or cold weather gear for South Africa or jeans that we wore on the plane from LA and definitely don't need in this hot weather. These bags go on top of Doris under a tarp and you can only access them on the rest days. Hence today we had to sort out what we needed for this section and what could be put back in the permanent bag. Once that was done we then went to the Blue Nile Sailing Camp where all the other riders were to clean our bikes and change our tires. The next four days are on asphalt so we don't need the thicker tires we had for the last stage.
We get to the Sudanese/Ethiopian border on the 8th of February and will be in Gondar, Ethiopia on February 10th. We have two rest days there on February 11 and 12 and so I'll be hitting the internet cafe to post another blog. It's 9.30pm here and time to hit the hay as we have a 166km ride in the morning. Part of it will be in convoy which is a general pain in the ass as we have to go so slow due to the police escort up front. Lots of stopping and starting and fluffing around. When we came into Khartoum on Saturday we had to ride in convoy after the police and it took hours. We got to ride past the Royal Palace which is an impressive building but I almost got taken out by a Ministry of Interiors Landcruiser as the driver was getting impatient with all the 40+ people on bikes in front of him, hogging the road and slowing him down that he tried to side swipe across us into his driveway. Unfortunately I was the closet one to him but a lucky escape.
Chris and I are both sitting here in the reception of Hotel Acropole at the internet computers doing the blog and checking email and you wouldn't believe what they are handing out. Small pots of homemade icecream!!Chris is on to number two..they are delicious....we're getting spoilt...what will we do in the desert camp tomorrow night? Which reminds me at one of our desert camps early in Sudan we were all sitting around after dinner watching the sunset..which by the way are absolutely stunning..and we saw a yoghurt/icecream truck go past. We all yelled out to him and cheered and to our surprise he not only stopped but also turned around and came back and gave us three pots of yoghurt.I guess it's not your usual sight to see 40+ people camping in the desert, in the middle of nowhere with bikes strewn on the ground. Anyway, we all bought yoghurt from the driver and he was off on his merry way. Small delight for a bunch of cyclists!!!A couple of days later on a non race day from a desert camp to Dongolar, (a killer 100 km ride which took 10 hours including the Nubian Desert crossing and a Nile ferry crossing in 42 degrees celcius and lots of sand) we were pretty much over riding a bike when the same truck with the same driver went past us. He recognised us, stopped and sold us cold, fresh milk and gave us chocolate. He was on his way back to Khartoum and he had delivered most of his products. I tell ya we all near kissed him when he stopped. He made our day!!Not only did we stop him but so did Chris and his group stop him as he got further up the road.
Ok this time I really am going to sign off. Tales of Aswan and the ferry crossing will have to wait until Ethiopia. Have no fear I am writing a daily journal and so I will not forget to fill you all in when we get to Gondar.
Love ya all,
Janet and Chris
I tell ya there is something sweet about sleeping on a good bed after a couple of weeks of sleeping on a thermarest mattress, in a tent in the desert!! We both slept well and when the Imans started their call to prayer chants at six am we were already awake and ready to go. My day started as it finished last night with another bath and then a huge breakfast. Chris and I then went to the local supermarket and stocked up on protein - tins of fish and beef as the protein provided by the tour is pretty non existant at breakfast (oats, porridge, bread and jam and now that we are in Sudan only one egg breakfast so far). Lunch is ok and our dinners are amazing but we need food to start the day. So for Chris and I who usually have to eat a cow for breakfast when doing as much exercise as we currently are, it means that on our rest day we forage and stock up on protein in any form that we can find it. Today we found salted cashews, a variety of cheeses, fish, beef and so two happy campers!!!!
With that task out of the way, we then went to the National Museum of Sudan which was way cool. They have three buildings which look like small airplane hangers in the grounds and each one has a reconstructed temple taken from the land under what is now Lake Nasr, dating back to 1550-1295BC. Unbelievable stuff. What is bizarre is that on these most amazing historic and archeologically rare hunks of stone, not only are there hieroglyphics and covered with paintings of Egyptian gods but there's also graffiti from the 1800's carved into the stone. Barstards!!!! You can even walk up to the temples and stangely enough are able to touch them which to me is quite odd. Surely if eveybody touches them, they'll gradually disintegrate or am I too used to living in the states where everything has to be locked down otherwise it will get lifted!! Inside the museum itself there were artifacts dating back 5,000 years. The ancient jewelry was a blast to see and I must admit I had a small princess moment when I saw all the armlets and gold headgear. Not as practical as a bike helmet which I'm in more need of right now.
After the Museum we checked out where the Blue and the White Nile converge at the White Nile bridge. The White Nile isn't actually white but instead a shitty grey colour but the Blue Nile is so blue in comparision that it makes the White Nile look less grey! Does that make sense? We couldn't take photos as there were police around and you have to have a permit to take photos in the more populated parts of Sudan, so you'll have to take my word for it.
After another huge lunch...(stocking up the calories in preparation of a six day stage which starts tomorrow) we both sorted out our 'red boxes'. The tour has a system where everybody has a red box and a permanent bag. The red boxes go inside 'Doris truck' and in it we place all the things that we will need for each stage which can be anywhere from 5 to 7 days. In it you'll find things like the tent, a sleeping bag, thermarest, clothes for riding, casual clothes when not riding, toilet bag,first aid kit etc and spare bike bits that we may need during the stage. In the permanent bag is all the other stuff that we may need for later countries like rain gear for Malawi or cold weather gear for South Africa or jeans that we wore on the plane from LA and definitely don't need in this hot weather. These bags go on top of Doris under a tarp and you can only access them on the rest days. Hence today we had to sort out what we needed for this section and what could be put back in the permanent bag. Once that was done we then went to the Blue Nile Sailing Camp where all the other riders were to clean our bikes and change our tires. The next four days are on asphalt so we don't need the thicker tires we had for the last stage.
We get to the Sudanese/Ethiopian border on the 8th of February and will be in Gondar, Ethiopia on February 10th. We have two rest days there on February 11 and 12 and so I'll be hitting the internet cafe to post another blog. It's 9.30pm here and time to hit the hay as we have a 166km ride in the morning. Part of it will be in convoy which is a general pain in the ass as we have to go so slow due to the police escort up front. Lots of stopping and starting and fluffing around. When we came into Khartoum on Saturday we had to ride in convoy after the police and it took hours. We got to ride past the Royal Palace which is an impressive building but I almost got taken out by a Ministry of Interiors Landcruiser as the driver was getting impatient with all the 40+ people on bikes in front of him, hogging the road and slowing him down that he tried to side swipe across us into his driveway. Unfortunately I was the closet one to him but a lucky escape.
Chris and I are both sitting here in the reception of Hotel Acropole at the internet computers doing the blog and checking email and you wouldn't believe what they are handing out. Small pots of homemade icecream!!Chris is on to number two..they are delicious....we're getting spoilt...what will we do in the desert camp tomorrow night? Which reminds me at one of our desert camps early in Sudan we were all sitting around after dinner watching the sunset..which by the way are absolutely stunning..and we saw a yoghurt/icecream truck go past. We all yelled out to him and cheered and to our surprise he not only stopped but also turned around and came back and gave us three pots of yoghurt.I guess it's not your usual sight to see 40+ people camping in the desert, in the middle of nowhere with bikes strewn on the ground. Anyway, we all bought yoghurt from the driver and he was off on his merry way. Small delight for a bunch of cyclists!!!A couple of days later on a non race day from a desert camp to Dongolar, (a killer 100 km ride which took 10 hours including the Nubian Desert crossing and a Nile ferry crossing in 42 degrees celcius and lots of sand) we were pretty much over riding a bike when the same truck with the same driver went past us. He recognised us, stopped and sold us cold, fresh milk and gave us chocolate. He was on his way back to Khartoum and he had delivered most of his products. I tell ya we all near kissed him when he stopped. He made our day!!Not only did we stop him but so did Chris and his group stop him as he got further up the road.
Ok this time I really am going to sign off. Tales of Aswan and the ferry crossing will have to wait until Ethiopia. Have no fear I am writing a daily journal and so I will not forget to fill you all in when we get to Gondar.
Love ya all,
Janet and Chris
Saturday, February 3, 2007
Bath Time in Khartoum, Sudan
Hello family and friends!!
We are in Khartoum, Sudan having checked into a hotel and have had two baths and four showers to remove the dust, sand and dirt of 10 days riding in the Sudan. All our fellow riders are at the Blue Nile Yatch Club camping by the Nile but Chris and I decided to do the hotel thing. Bed and a bath for sure!!!! We have crossed the Nubian Desert and have just done part of the Sahara Desert. Check out the photos on Tourdafrique.com and see what we have ridden through!!!! Sand, sand and more sand with a bit of rock thrown in for good measure! Our sunblock is great stuff from Australia, it stays on the skin, blocks out the burning rays from the sun BUT it also holds the sand and dirt and so we both look like we have great tans. If you had have seen the bath and the bath water today you would have realised it was not tan..just dirt!!! I tell you......small pleasures so far are :
1. Water
2. Hot water
3. A bath tub
4. Going to the toilet and doing number twos without needing a shovel!
5. Toilet paper
6. Asphalt to ride on and coke stops!! Can you believe it..coke stops for the health fanatics. After riding in 44.7 degrees celcius, a bottle of coke is like a lightening bolt to the system!! Who would have thought we would be drinking that stuff. (Clients..it does not mean you can!!!)
Anyway, the Cairo to Khartoum Section finished today, almost 2,000km down, 10,000km to go! I was the overall female winner of the first section which is called 'Pharoah's Delight' having won all bar two of the stages. If you've been following the race results you would have seen that one of the stages didn't have a female winner. That's because I was the only female racing that day and I had to stop at the lunch truck and get on Doris as I have a sprained wrist. I didn't want to do it but my hand was numb and so I figured that I had better give it up rather than face permanent damage of my hand. By getting on the truck you also incur a 12 hour penalty so I was not happy!!! You can tell that I must have been in pain ..being slightly competitive and all that!!! So how did I sprain my hand you ask? I wish I could say that it was a flying crash in the sand in Sudan but alas no. It was more simple than that. Last Sunday Chris and Tom from the US were getting a traditional shave with a blade etc in a small town called Dongolar while I tried to find an internet cafe. It was our rest day and we had spent all day cleaning our bikes and doing laundry etc and I was tired. It was dark and the dirt road was wet and slippery and I tripped and fell. My rubber crocs sent me flying (not a fashion shoe so what was I thinking wearing them!) anyway when I broke my fall it was with a right wrist!!! So, I tried to ride Monday. The first 50km of the stage was on asphalt and I was ok riding with one hand but the next 10km before the lunch truck was off road and brutal! Every bump, every judderbar just killed and so I had to stop.
Next day I rode and was OK as it was predominantly asphalt and hard packed dirt but the day after that I had to stop 15km before the end as my hand was numb again. Eva ended up winning the stage but I figured it wasn't worth damaging my hand just in order to win another stage. I was behind Eva by 6 minutes in that stage so it wasn't too bad. When I got to camp Chris mobilised my nerves and did some soft tissue work and iced it and that seemed to get feeling back in my hand. Next day I was pissed so rode hard and won the stage as the 130km was all asphalt. It's easier to ride one handed on asphalt than on the off road stuff. Chris also won the stage that day so Team Alexander-Maund did well. This morning we had a time trial and I came in second to Eva, back 1 minute 15 seconds. I didn't have any aerobars and had a slide in the sandy 1.5km off road section and lost momentum. I duct taped my wrist so that I could ride on the drops and I'm paying for it now!!! Our aerobars are in transit somewhere and hopefully will get to Addis so we can use them in the next time trial. Chris made a pair of aerobars out of two steel tent pegs and a towel. It looked odd but it worked. He was only 25 seconds behind Ardrie and came in second. We have a rest day tomorrow and so I'll be resting the wrist. I bought an elastic bandage this evening from a local pharmacy and it's much better when I wear it. It has to heal soon as we are heading towards the hills and mountains of Addis Abeba in Ethiopia. Addis is at 9,000 feet..yeah baby!!!
The Sudanese people are unbelievable. Very polite, generous people and have been nothing but a pleasure as we ride/race through their villages. They are amazed that we have chosen their country to ride through and you should see the kids when they see the bikes and all our bling and toys! It's a blast. They are so poor yet have such grace. A very proud people and we have enjoyed them immensely. Calls to pray wake us up at 5.20 - 6.30am and have become a normal part of our day. It's very cool!!
Update since Safaga:
I always seem to be apologising for not updating you on our travels but there seems to be a bike getting in the way. After Safaga, we did a hill stage to a desert camp, then another stage to Luxor where we had a rest day and we intended finding an internet cafe and getting on the blog BUT there were too many Egyptian Tombs to see (including Tut's) and Temples etc so we did an organised tour to ensure that we saw it all. It started at 8.00 am and didn't finish until 3.00 pm. All well worth it but after the day of sight seeing we had to then replenish the food supplies and get the calorie count up and ended up sitting on the banks of the Nile in a great fish restuarant eating like there was no tomorrow!! The thought of an internet cafe definitely went out the window when we saw the old style boats on the Nile ..a Falook ..spelling may be off and so we took a sunset cruise with an Egyptian Captain who called himself 'Captain Cook' as soon as he found out that I was from New Zealand. The boats are the old style sail boats , quiet, beautiful and a great way to see the sunset. When we finally got back to shore it was time to organise the next days cycling gear and so we didn't make it.
The next stage was Luxor to Idfu a small rural town....or so we thought between Luxor and Aswan where we were heading to catch the ferry to Sudan. We were told that the town was rural and so as females in an Islamic town not to walk the streets by ourselves and to be appropriately dressed as in no bare arms or legs. The stage was a great ride....bar the crash when Patrick from South Africa ate it at a railway crossing which was suspect to say the least. We had a police escort and we were all riding slowly in a group when the road starting turning to the left and the railway line went on an oblique angle which was hell for cycle tires. Patrick went down and I was behind him so I had to throw my bike down in order to not take out Douglas our blind rider from Kenya (who incidently is amazing!!) who was on my right side. Remy was behind me and he went down as well. I ended up with a bruise on my hip but escaped without injury! Very lucky..
Hey it is 10.25pm here in Khartoum and my eyes are rolling around in my head and I need to sleep. Internet is free in this hotel and so I will get back to you in the am. I'll tell you all about Chris and his racing, Aswan, the overnight ferry ride from Egypt to Sudan on Lake Nassar, teh ferry ride across the Nile with cars, bikes adn a donkey and also what we are about to do in the next section.
Love ya all and hope you are all well.
Stay away from coke..it rots your teeth and you should only drink it after a 170km stage ride!!
Later
Team Alexander/Maund in Africa....loving it!!
We are in Khartoum, Sudan having checked into a hotel and have had two baths and four showers to remove the dust, sand and dirt of 10 days riding in the Sudan. All our fellow riders are at the Blue Nile Yatch Club camping by the Nile but Chris and I decided to do the hotel thing. Bed and a bath for sure!!!! We have crossed the Nubian Desert and have just done part of the Sahara Desert. Check out the photos on Tourdafrique.com and see what we have ridden through!!!! Sand, sand and more sand with a bit of rock thrown in for good measure! Our sunblock is great stuff from Australia, it stays on the skin, blocks out the burning rays from the sun BUT it also holds the sand and dirt and so we both look like we have great tans. If you had have seen the bath and the bath water today you would have realised it was not tan..just dirt!!! I tell you......small pleasures so far are :
1. Water
2. Hot water
3. A bath tub
4. Going to the toilet and doing number twos without needing a shovel!
5. Toilet paper
6. Asphalt to ride on and coke stops!! Can you believe it..coke stops for the health fanatics. After riding in 44.7 degrees celcius, a bottle of coke is like a lightening bolt to the system!! Who would have thought we would be drinking that stuff. (Clients..it does not mean you can!!!)
Anyway, the Cairo to Khartoum Section finished today, almost 2,000km down, 10,000km to go! I was the overall female winner of the first section which is called 'Pharoah's Delight' having won all bar two of the stages. If you've been following the race results you would have seen that one of the stages didn't have a female winner. That's because I was the only female racing that day and I had to stop at the lunch truck and get on Doris as I have a sprained wrist. I didn't want to do it but my hand was numb and so I figured that I had better give it up rather than face permanent damage of my hand. By getting on the truck you also incur a 12 hour penalty so I was not happy!!! You can tell that I must have been in pain ..being slightly competitive and all that!!! So how did I sprain my hand you ask? I wish I could say that it was a flying crash in the sand in Sudan but alas no. It was more simple than that. Last Sunday Chris and Tom from the US were getting a traditional shave with a blade etc in a small town called Dongolar while I tried to find an internet cafe. It was our rest day and we had spent all day cleaning our bikes and doing laundry etc and I was tired. It was dark and the dirt road was wet and slippery and I tripped and fell. My rubber crocs sent me flying (not a fashion shoe so what was I thinking wearing them!) anyway when I broke my fall it was with a right wrist!!! So, I tried to ride Monday. The first 50km of the stage was on asphalt and I was ok riding with one hand but the next 10km before the lunch truck was off road and brutal! Every bump, every judderbar just killed and so I had to stop.
Next day I rode and was OK as it was predominantly asphalt and hard packed dirt but the day after that I had to stop 15km before the end as my hand was numb again. Eva ended up winning the stage but I figured it wasn't worth damaging my hand just in order to win another stage. I was behind Eva by 6 minutes in that stage so it wasn't too bad. When I got to camp Chris mobilised my nerves and did some soft tissue work and iced it and that seemed to get feeling back in my hand. Next day I was pissed so rode hard and won the stage as the 130km was all asphalt. It's easier to ride one handed on asphalt than on the off road stuff. Chris also won the stage that day so Team Alexander-Maund did well. This morning we had a time trial and I came in second to Eva, back 1 minute 15 seconds. I didn't have any aerobars and had a slide in the sandy 1.5km off road section and lost momentum. I duct taped my wrist so that I could ride on the drops and I'm paying for it now!!! Our aerobars are in transit somewhere and hopefully will get to Addis so we can use them in the next time trial. Chris made a pair of aerobars out of two steel tent pegs and a towel. It looked odd but it worked. He was only 25 seconds behind Ardrie and came in second. We have a rest day tomorrow and so I'll be resting the wrist. I bought an elastic bandage this evening from a local pharmacy and it's much better when I wear it. It has to heal soon as we are heading towards the hills and mountains of Addis Abeba in Ethiopia. Addis is at 9,000 feet..yeah baby!!!
The Sudanese people are unbelievable. Very polite, generous people and have been nothing but a pleasure as we ride/race through their villages. They are amazed that we have chosen their country to ride through and you should see the kids when they see the bikes and all our bling and toys! It's a blast. They are so poor yet have such grace. A very proud people and we have enjoyed them immensely. Calls to pray wake us up at 5.20 - 6.30am and have become a normal part of our day. It's very cool!!
Update since Safaga:
I always seem to be apologising for not updating you on our travels but there seems to be a bike getting in the way. After Safaga, we did a hill stage to a desert camp, then another stage to Luxor where we had a rest day and we intended finding an internet cafe and getting on the blog BUT there were too many Egyptian Tombs to see (including Tut's) and Temples etc so we did an organised tour to ensure that we saw it all. It started at 8.00 am and didn't finish until 3.00 pm. All well worth it but after the day of sight seeing we had to then replenish the food supplies and get the calorie count up and ended up sitting on the banks of the Nile in a great fish restuarant eating like there was no tomorrow!! The thought of an internet cafe definitely went out the window when we saw the old style boats on the Nile ..a Falook ..spelling may be off and so we took a sunset cruise with an Egyptian Captain who called himself 'Captain Cook' as soon as he found out that I was from New Zealand. The boats are the old style sail boats , quiet, beautiful and a great way to see the sunset. When we finally got back to shore it was time to organise the next days cycling gear and so we didn't make it.
The next stage was Luxor to Idfu a small rural town....or so we thought between Luxor and Aswan where we were heading to catch the ferry to Sudan. We were told that the town was rural and so as females in an Islamic town not to walk the streets by ourselves and to be appropriately dressed as in no bare arms or legs. The stage was a great ride....bar the crash when Patrick from South Africa ate it at a railway crossing which was suspect to say the least. We had a police escort and we were all riding slowly in a group when the road starting turning to the left and the railway line went on an oblique angle which was hell for cycle tires. Patrick went down and I was behind him so I had to throw my bike down in order to not take out Douglas our blind rider from Kenya (who incidently is amazing!!) who was on my right side. Remy was behind me and he went down as well. I ended up with a bruise on my hip but escaped without injury! Very lucky..
Hey it is 10.25pm here in Khartoum and my eyes are rolling around in my head and I need to sleep. Internet is free in this hotel and so I will get back to you in the am. I'll tell you all about Chris and his racing, Aswan, the overnight ferry ride from Egypt to Sudan on Lake Nassar, teh ferry ride across the Nile with cars, bikes adn a donkey and also what we are about to do in the next section.
Love ya all and hope you are all well.
Stay away from coke..it rots your teeth and you should only drink it after a 170km stage ride!!
Later
Team Alexander/Maund in Africa....loving it!!
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