Day Three of riding, finally getting a chance to sit down in the windy windy desert to type an update. The last few days have been a whirlwind. Still hard to believe at times I am riding my bike across Africa. The magnitude of the trip and difficulty of this lifestyle are starting to wear on people, but people are trying to stay in high spirits. The rides to start with have been really long, considering most of us are from cold climates and the general consensus is that a lot of people haven’t been on their bikes a whole lot in the last little bit.
Our ride distances for this first section are : Day 1- 134km Day 2- 168km Day 3- 140km Day 4- 90 km Day 5- 139km Day 6- 95km… Then our first rest day in Luxor.
Yesterday really tested everyone, and I unfortunatly lost my EFI status on Day 2…. The distance was very easily accomplished had the weather worked with us a bit. From early on in the day we got terrible, terrible headwinds coming off the Red Sea. They continued up until our lunch stop at 71km, where people were pretty tired. The afternoon proved to be the most difficult riding in my life up until this point, with winds upwards of 40km/hr at points. I wasn’t quite fast enough to join some of the pelotons so I found myself biking alone a long ways until finally met up with Steve (South African) and Sam (American) and we started to help each other out. It was a long long way to the “Refresh stop” where we were all out of water. That rest stop (a jug and Mohammed sitting on the side of the highway was like an oasis in the stark Eygptian desert)… The next 25 km (for me) and 28 km for Sam and Steve turned out to be very very long. At about 155km I started to get really tired, as this happened, my bike control got worse and worse, until I veered a little in the sand and took an epic wipe out, going down hard and fast almost taking Sam out with me. I hit my head and elbow really hard, but had a lot of adrenaline no time to examine the injuries, we knew we had to pick up the pace or we would miss the 5:30 (dark) cut off for the day. At this point my body hurt bad and I could think of nothing more than getting off my bike. At 5:45 we saw the van coming down the highway on the other side, we decided if we booked it, we might make it, it was everyone for themselves at this point. At 5:55 with 3km left to camp the van caught up to me and I was told to get in. You can imagine this was not a pleasant ride for the riders that had been picked up a ways back as I was very upset, knowing that I could have easily made it the last 3km to camp. We reached Sam with 1 km left and he was told if he went fast he could ride, by this point Steve had already made it. A storm blew in quickly afterwards and camp was overwhelmed with wind and torrential downpouring rain. About 20 minutes later I heard Paul (tour director) say that the final riders were just riding in!!! I was so upset, people that were 20 minutes behind me were able to ride in, and I lost EFI for 3km. It was a bad day.
Today was much much better with mainly tailwinds and only a portion of the ways headwinds. People’s knees and bums are suffering at this point. Saddle sores are really not fun. Mine are definitely not as bad as some but I feel like the next few days will be very painful until I get used to this.
Egypt has been amazing so far with miles and miles of desert and long open (paved!) roads… Our 38km convoy out of Cairo was crazy, organized chaos, which I never would have attempted without a police escort. It is crazy to think of how much time and riding are left on this trip. There are so many riders on this trip I don’t even know everyone’s names yet. As in all groups, little cliques have formed and people kinda stay with the people they know. Fair enough. I am just so happy that someone else makes me a hot drink and it is ready when I get into camp!
