Saturday, 3rd February, 2007

To: Khartoum

Did it again. Rode hard. But just for a short time. 18 km. The racers were doing time trials today. Last night, in camp, the tour leaders asked if any of the non-regular-racers would like to partake in the time trials. Several people said, "Come on, Leigh Anne, do it, it'll be fun." Don't know what got into me, but I said, "O.k., I'll do that." To which some people cheered.

This morning, it was organised so that the slowest person starts first. Then, people leave in 1-minute intervals, in order from slowest to fastest. So, of course, I was first on the road, at exactly 8:00 a.m. I was surprised that only about 5 people passed me. Here is a picture of one of my fellows (I think that's Andrew) crossing the finish line after me.

This would probably have been an ordinary ol' time trial (of which I have never done a bloody "time trial" in my entire life, so not sure if I'm a good judge of what an "ordinary" one is). The only kink occurred about 3/4 of the way through, when a big herd of camels came across our path. It reminded me. Yep, still in Sudan! Here is a picture of our friends, the camels, along with a few amazed cyclists looking on.

After the time trial, we had to convoy about 30 km into Khartoum, with police escort, sirens, the whole nine yards. Deja vu. Reminded me of Cairo. The first police escort took us 8 km to the suburbs of Khartoum. As we neared the suburbs, we started passing shops and people on the roads and people cheered us on, as though it were the tour de france or something. Apparently, however, these were country police who didn't have authority to enter the Khartoum suburbs. At that point, we all stopped and nobody knew why, but from out of nowhere, a Sudanese shop-owner arrived with a whole crate of cokes and handed them out! Free. I love the Sudanese! After maybe 20 minutes, more police arrived, the Khartoum police. We thought these would be the ones to take us to the Blue Nile campground, where we are staying. We started convoying again, and then something fun happened. As we road along the busy roads (blocking up all traffic, by the way), we kept getting joined by people from the Sudanese biking club. In all, about 10 joined us, and I think a few of them will ride with us all the way to the Ethiopian border (3 more days). But we got as far as the Omdurman-Khartoum bridge and mysteriously stopped again. Nobody knew why for a long time, until we were told that we were waiting for the City Police. While waiting, traffic on the bridge was blocked. We kept joking that of course the City Police couldn't get there, as all traffic was blocked. Well, somehow they arrived and we took off again. You can't see it very well in this photo, but other than our entourage, traffic on this side of the (very busy) bridge has been halted by that official that you see there (that's Eva - Netherlands - in the forground there).

So, we rode over the bridge and got as far as the off ramp. That's when the tour station wagon caught on fire. (The South Africans call this car the "Buckie".) It was in serious smoke from the back, not the front, so couldn't be the engine. We all stopped, doors flew open, and the passengers jumped out. One of the Sudanese cycling club members came rushing over with is Camelbak pack of water. But before he could get there, Abdil (my backgammon buddy) already had the fire extinguisher out. Apparently, it was a battery that overheated, while sitting back there, and then it started burning up something or other. All this while, the Sudanese official guy is yelling at us to "hurry! hurry!" because he's blocking traffic on our side of the bridge until we are completely off. After the station wagon stopped burning up, we continued. From there, we made it to our campground without any more incident.

Just another ordinary day on the tour. And tomorrow is a rest day in Khartoum - yeeaahhhh! Time to people observe. I promise in my next posting to bring you back to ordinary life in Africa. No more racing segments. My friends who know and love me, don't worry, it's still me, deep down, that racing stuff was just a blip on road where I knew there would be no villages anyway.

------------- TODAY ------------- TOTAL

Cycled ------ 52 km (37.5 mi) ----- 1,617 km (1,006.5 mi)

Sagged -------- 0 -------------------- 314.5 km (207.5 mi)

Total --------- 52 km (37.5 mi) -----1,931.5 km (1,214 mi)

In Saddle ----- 2 hrs 39 min ------- 95 hours 58 min

Ascended ----- 250 feet ------------ 15,166 feet