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From:
Date: 30 Apr 2006
Time: 11:45:14 +0200
Remote Name: 196.44.153.3
The day riding into Maun was only 150k, of which 40k was set as a team time trial. Many leisure riders opt out of the time trials (the racers have to do them) and I did the usual opt out. The "bush-babys" team of Christa M, Deb, Emmy and Rita passed my around 10 or 15k into the time trail and I decided to jump into the group and stayed with them to the end. My legs are now so much stronger than they were, probably even stronger than at the end of the Tour du Canada, shame about the rest of me. One memorable aspect of the time trial was the hordes of suicidal dung beetles who decided it would be a good idea to cross the road in front of 20 speeding cyclists over this 40k stretch. What can I say about dung beetles: they are large round beetle like creatures who eat dung (not sure whether they prefer elephant dung or cow dung) and also eat each other. There were plenty roadkill dung beetles all over the place, and you could almost guarantee that one of the deceased's brethren would be standing over him having a good feed before he too became dinner for one of his good buddies when I ran over him. When they see your wheel whizzing past them with milimetres to spare they straighten their little legs up to make themselves bigger and emit this squeeking noise (I did try to avoid them, honest). Kees even found one rolling a piece of dung across the road while I was riding past and started to made a video of it - I'm not sure whether the beetle made it though, because there was a ten ton truck speeding towards it from the opposite direction at the time. One more dung beetle squeeked its last.