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From:
Date: 05 Feb 2006
Time: 14:07:47 +0100
Remote Name: 196.202.158.54
It's been two weeks since the last journal update - in which time I gave up my EFI status due to (1) a desire to maintain lightly-fried English brains as opposed to deep-fried, re-fried and then microwaved English brains, and (2) cursed wretched shocks that blew on the first day of off-road riding and leaked so much air that all my energy got sapped into bouncing around on the front fork, seriously irritating me. Where to begin...We all headed out in convoy from Aswan in the morning for the ride to the ferry on Lake Nasser. We got to cross both the lower and the high Aswan dam, and then cooked in the sun for a short while as the passport formalities were taken care of before boarding our boat for Wadi Halfa in Sudan. Imagine 44 cyclists fighting through a small legion of local traders getting their wares and supplies on the boat - all jostling to get their crates of supplies, luggage and bikes on the boat at the same time. After the ordeal of loading was over, all the strange white foreign creatures gathered on the bow of the boat (yes, there were a few titanic poses on the prow) and enjoyed a few hours sailing in the setting sun as we said goodbye to Egypt that evening and hello to Sudan the following morning. We wisely let the locals offload their wares in Wadi Halfa before carting all our bags and bikes off. Then a short ride to the end of the pier and a few hours of waiting around in the immigration hall for the entry formalities to be completed. Then a 5k ride through a sand pit to get to camp (another football pitch - being a sandpit surrounded by four walls). I heard a loud pop during the short ride, and thought I'd blown a tire - btu this was the seal blowing on my front shock absorber. Little did I know the trouble this would cause me later. Because the boat had been delayed leaving Aswan, and we had spent so long getting offloaded and then waiting in immigration, by the time we got to camp there was only an hour or two of daylight left to get tents up, change tyres for offroad conditions and repack all our belongings using the red box and permanent bag system for the new support crew. The African routes support crew takes over from Sudan all the way to Cape Town, and there was a huge cheer when they all rolled into camp that evening. I think I had had a bit too much sun standing around after getting off the boat and waiting for immigration, because I had a splitting headache and I just about managed to get my tyres changed before the contents of my stomach decided they wanted to vacate the premises. Dinner was not an option for my insides that evening, and the following morning the splitting headache had not gone away. So, we're all ready to go at eight or nine in the morning - an ideal time to get on the road before the day gets too hot. But no - need to wait to get passports back from Sudanese authorities, need to wait for trucks to wait for petrol stations to open. Picture 44 cyclists lined up in the only shade of the wall of the football stadium, finally on tippy toes with backs pressed to the wall at 12.30am when all the shade virtually disappeared. Then the trucks get back, and we're off on the worst roads I've ever seen. Sand, what can I say about cycling through sand - it scares the crap out of me, that's what I can say. Getting better at it now, but it's so easy to skid and fall. Starting off in the heat of the day (around 35 or 40 celcius), me and Huberte got to the lunch truck at around 4-ish and realised there was no chance of getting to the end in daylight so waited for the riders behind us then got on the truck. Bye bye EFI, hello sanity. Being of the blond-haired blue-eyed common or garden flower variety, baking desert sun plus splitting headache and no dinner the night before is not a good combination. Sat out the next day too and slept all afternoon, finally getting rid of headache and eating something. Back on the road again the next day - about a 90k day through the desert to a campsite along the Nile. Got to around 65k and realised there was no air in my shocks. Flagged the lunch truck down to try and get hold of a shock pump, but it was on the other truck so had no option but to throw the bike on the truck. Had a wash in the Nile that evening - which must have been a thrill for a passing boatload of Sudanese men. Did the whole day's ride the day after, getting into camp around 4.30 ish, with only medium-fried brains that day. The following ride was our ride into Dongola, first rest day in the Sudan. There was a 30k desert crossing in semi-convoy (i.e. follow the bike tracks through the sand, make sure you can see the rider in front of you and the rider behind can see you and don't get lost...). Then waiting around in the sun for an hour or two before the trucks catch up. So again, it's 12.30 and the heat of the day, and there is supposedly 10k to the Nile ferry followed by a 60k ride into Dongola. Never going to make it, so no option but to get on the truck along with my fellow expedition riders. As it turned out there was an hour or two wait for the ferry, and the racers were only getting in an hour or so before sunset, with the last of the expedition riders riding like crazy to get in as the sun was going down. That took a lot out of many people. Our first rest day in Sudan was in a park that used to be a zoo until all the animals got washed away in a flood one year. But the zoo analogy still held - plenty locals looking through the walls at the strange exotic beasts milling around doing laundry and bike maintenance. I probably spent too long sorting out my luggage and cleaning my chain because one of my fellow riders shouted "Judy, you look pink, get out of the sun". So I did. The following day was a luxurious 47k of paved road out of Dongola until we hit the sand and washboard again. Got to lunch in good time with Huberte and headed out in the afternoon - got a flat straight away. Should have seen it as an omen to get on the truck, but I fixed it and carried on anyway. Huberte had gone ahead when I got the flat and about 15k later I could feel my brains starting to fry and realised I had about another 10k left in me before my brains turned into kentucky fried chicken. So got in some shade and when a passing 14 wheeler truck stopped to check I was ok and offer me a lift, I took it. I made the acquaintance of Tak the driver (probably in his 50s) and Hamid the co-driver (about 25)who was a bit of a sweetie. Could have a little conversation with Tak, who spoke some, but not much English. But when Hamid got out of the truck to check the bike was secured down, Tak spoke just enough English to communicate in no uncertain terms that he would quite like to show me how good Sudanese men could be. It's always the older one's you've got to watch out for... Time for holding up of hands in stop mode, shaking of head and simple English words along the lines of "I'm a good girl". Thankfully Hamid gets back in and we go another 5k before seeing Ayesha sitting under a tree, so she jumps in too. Further down the road we run into Danny, Huberte and Todd then the 14 wheeler gets stuck in the sand 5k from camp and we have to be rescued by the buggy. There went my big entrance into camp. Two riders were still out when we got in - Katherine (she's tough) had got lost in the desert and pushed her bike through sand for three hours before storming into camp just before sunset, and Raj also got lost and was quite close to camp when the buggy brought her in the last few kms. The buggy is the small pick-up truck that is part of the support crew. The following day we had the headwind from hell, and a bunch of us wisely decided to skip the first 60k of the day which included 40k of very bad road, and ride the last half of the day. It was a good ride, tough but enjoyable. The following day my shocks decided to give up for good. I'd been carrying a shock pump with me for the week, needing to pump up every half day, but they finally lost the will to retain air and went flat as a pancake. Medhat, our Ethiopian rider guide, was not far behind me and realizing there was no chance of fixing them, he flagged down a passing pick up and threw our bikes in the back. He held on to the bikes in the back and I got in the front with three chinese gentlemen. So I got chance to ramble on in my limited chinese for a short while. One of them told me I was "feichang piaoliang" (very beautiful) and I thought to myself: my word, I've pulled again, twice in one week, and I thought my babe days were over.... There are may chinese working in Sudan - oil and gas exploration and electicity supply. Monty is also a chinese speaker, much more advanced than me, and yesterday we were sitting in the middle of the Sudanese desert having a conversation in chinese with two of the chinese engineers who had stopped to say hello. How bizarre is that. I was so fed up with the bike that I sat out the next day - apart from the fact that the bike was not rideable anyway - and helped out on sandwich duties at lunchtime. There was quite a sandstorm that day, it was quite an experience for many riders to cycle through something like that. Sandwiches that day were a choice of tuna, beans and sand or peanut butter, jam and sand. Hmm, tasty. That evening, possibly sensing I was majorly fed up with my wheels failing me, Todd and Randy worked a miracle to sort me out with an alternative set of forks. In the end, it was Gergo to the rescue with his rigid forks (the alternative was cycling without any front brakes), and I am now back on the road again. I even feel quite speedy now, but I'm sure it won't last.... Yesterday we had a time trial for the racers on some good paved road (I didn't time trial, but tested my new forks out and got up to over 40km/hr for quite some time, so things are looking up). Finally we had a 20k police escort - sirens wailing - into Khartoum. Randy had asked for four "mean and ugly looking guys" to ride at the front of the convoy and stop to block traffic as we passed. In the end there was about a ten-strong row of guys riding like some pretorian guard in a line at the front (not all of them mean, not all of them ugly-looking) periodically swooping to the left and right to block oncoming traffic. You could tell they were enjoying every minute of it. With the police escort and wailing sirens, it made for quite a ride into Khartoum. Felt better than royalty, a once in a lifetime experience. Today we are camped out at the Blue Nile sailing club and enjoying a relaxing rest day. That's it for now - another week of riding in 40 - 50 degrees c before we start climbing in Ethiopia. Should be interesting riding the Blue Nile Gorge with no shocks - should get some in Addis Ababa if things go according to plan.