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