200km riding day

There is nothing more daunting than waking up after a 152km day, knowing that you have a 200km riding day. For a lot of riders on the tour, this riding day will be the longest any of us have ever biked consecutively, however I am sure for many it won’t be the last. We woke up at “Mama Rules” campsite which was a nice overlander campsite with a pool (although I never saw it) and showers and and a bar and restaurant, pretty nice campsite for our first day in Zambia. Since passing over the border the landscape has changed (again) and the roads have become a little less maintained. They are bumpier and watching for large potholes in the road is essential to not have an accident. Plus the bike riders in this country seem to ride on the wrong side of the road. While it took some of us long enough to get used to riding on the left hand side of the road (since Kenya), now we need to get used to riding with other bikers coming directly at us.

The riding day began pretty good however at 40km I had my 21 flat tire in the form of a blow out. I quickly changed this out as I have become quite good at changing tires now and continued the ride. Lunch arrived at 84km and when I rode into lunch I realized I had a second flat tire (my 22 of the trip…)It was frustrating but Sam said that I could use his front wheel because he didn’t want to ride anymore. It worked out quite well because I didn’t want to change anymore tires for the day. The day went on and on kilometer after kilometer. I was lucky because I loaded a lot of podcasts and audio tapes onto my ipod shuffle. It is a long long way to ride on your own. I rode *almost* all day on my own which is a long ways and a lot of thinking time. At around 185 km one of my friends biked back to see if I was okay, he had already been to camp and then camp out to find me, it was really nice to have someone to ride with the last 15km. Camp actually ended up to be at 195, which was great for my legs but disappointing for the fact that I could have carried on to make the 200km. A very satisfying day, with a party waiting at camp for Tony’s 50th birthday and Juliana’s birthday… Drinks for all and a good rest before the rest of the week’s riding days of 124km, 152km and 108km respectively before reaching Lusaka (where there is apparently a Subway). Since our halfway mark for time and distance did not happen at the same time, we now have a lot of ground to cover to get to Capetown by May 15. The good news is that Botswana is very flat, the bad news is we have a lot of miles to cover within that time…

The last 5 days have taken a toll on riders. In five days we rode 720km and now we have another 500km to ride in the next three days to arrive in Victoria Falls for our double day off. A bunch of us are going to go into Zimbabwe to go to the world famous Vic Falls Hotel to rest. We have so many kilometers to cover still and people’s bodies.are getting tired.