7500 Miles

In the morning I collected all my wet laundry but left my clothesline behind. The scenery was beautiful, and mostly devoid of people. I heard very few “You” and “Ferengi” calls. The few people I did meet along the road were quite friendly. The big surprise of the day was that our new, temporary lunch truck broke down at lunch—the starter motor just wouldn’t work. That means that I was in camp hours before my stuff was there. I spent the time wandering around the desert looking for any possible shelter from the ominous rain clouds forming overhead and climbing acacia trees and termite mounds. I also took the time to visit the nearby singing wells. The singing wells are an interesting phenomenon. Instead of digging wells straight down, the locals dig long ramps down into the water table. When they need water, they all get together in a chain and hoist the buckets to the top of the ramp. They sing to pass the time. Unfortunately, there was no hoisting or singing going on this afternoon.

South of our camp in the dry lake bed, the road was sparsely populated and peaceful. There was a lot of downhill terrain to enjoy and more lush green vegetation. We had some rain during the ride, but not enough to crush my spirits—we were on our way to another rest day. My knees barely survived the long ride. The incredible amount of unexpected climbing the day before destroyed them. If not for the rest day, I might have had to ride the truck.
The booming metropolis of Yabello was a bit of a disappointment. We camped on the grounds of a hotel. The only place to eat in town was our hotel restaurant, where the service was phenomenally incompetent. The waiters definitely played favorites, and I definitely wasn’t one of the favorites. They would actively avoid me once it became obvious that just ignoring me wouldn’t make me go away. If I waved, they would wave back and walk away. If I tapped them on the shoulder, they would pull away, and if I stood in front of them, they would push me out of the way. Nobody had good results. People spent two to three hours of pestering to get an order of fries. The bills were never right, and the waiters had to be cornered if we wanted change. The best results came from going the kitchen and placing the orders ourselves.
Aside from the food, the other surprises included a complete lack of Internet access in the town. There was also only one shop with food, and it was nearly sold out by the time I had arrived. Electricity was often unavailable, or worse—stuck in an electronic-damaging 70-volt brownout. Finally, I washed my clothes immediately when we arrived and hung them out on a line to dry, where they sat through the rainstorm that started just after dark. I spent most of the rest of the rest day creatively hanging/wringing things out trying to get them to dry.

This is just a quick post to let my loyal viewers–both of you–know that I haven’t abandoned this blog. I’m just struggling to find places that have both electricity and adequate Internet bandwidth to post new entries. I’m now 3,500km into the journey in Addis Ababa, where “Broadband” means 14,400kb dial-up connections shared by at least 20 computers. Viewing web pages that contain even the smallest graphics is time-consuming. Uploading any pictures is a strict no-no.

So this is just a temporary post to fill in the gaps. In summary, Ethiopia is much different from Sudan. The landscape changed dramatically from sparse deserts to beautiful, fertile mountains. There are children everywhere, shouting “YouYouYouYouYou” and “Where are you go?” Most are friendly, but some of them are angry and throw rocks. Most rocks are small, but others have left riders with stitches, bruises, dented helmets, and damaged bicycle frames. We always have an audience when we set up our tents, eat, brush our teeth, or go to the bathroom. It takes some getting used to.

The brakes of one of our trucks went out, and shifting it into low gear to bring it to a stop destroyed the engine, so we had an extra rest day in Dongola and are using a rented bus and flatbed truck for the time-being. We had another rest day in Bahir Dar and had a Mardi Gras theme party. After that, it has been a lot of climbing through the mountains and the Blue Nile Gorge. From here we head South toward Nairobe, Kenya. There are some rough roads ahead.

This is a space holder. Watch for new entries here at the next Internet access opportunity.

The group was significantly smaller when we left camp in the morning. Ten people had already gone ahead to Gonder from Sudan and another six hitched a ride ahead in the morning. The day was a “Mando Day.” Racers are allowed to drop their three longest stages from their total race times. Mando Days cannot be dropped, presumably because they are the most difficult days. The day did involve a lot of climbing, and was difficult. I am a bit used to climbing because of the terrain we have back home, so I didn’t find it as difficult as some did. I didn’t ride very fast, either.
The day took its toll in other ways as well. Our dinner truck lost its brakes on a downhill. The driver, in an attempt to bring it safely to a stop threw the transmission into a low gear. The engine responded with a loud bang and a gaping hole in the crankcase. The result is that we got an extra much-needed rest day in Gonder while the truck situation was sorted out. A second casualty occurred during the day. One of the fastest riders ran into a woman who jumped out in front of him. She was alright, but he ended up breaking his collarbone. He lost EFI status and will be missing many days of riding (if he is able to continue at all).
Gonder is a nice town high up in the hills. Our hotel, the Goha, is at the very top of the tallest hill. It provides a nice view, but a less pleasant bike ride to the top at the end of a long day. On the first rest day, I went with a group to visit the charity that Tony is raising money for. He has been donating money to a school in the area and they were very thankful for his contributions. They had named an entire wing “The Tony Block” in appreciation. We watched an intramural football game, then saw coffee beans being roasted and then ground with a mortar and pestle, before finally being turned into coffee over hot coals. Some popcorn was popped over those same coals while we watched a small dance performance by a few schoolgirls. One interesting way of improving school attendance was to build quality toilet stalls. Many of the homes don’t have their own toilets, so providing a place for the girls to go to the bathroom keeps them in school for a couple years longer.
We were all invited to visit the Dashen Brewery, so the first evening, we all went down to check it out. It has a big open beer garden, so we spent a lot of time hanging out and enjoying the free drinks there, happy to not be on our bikes.
I picked the right time to visit Ethiopia, as the 56 days before Easter everyone is fasting. That made it easy to always find fasting (vegetarian) food. The main staple food in Ethiopia is injera, a porous pancake-like bread made from the local grain tef. On top of the injera is a variety of spicy and delicious dishes. No silverware is used; you eat the food by tearing off pieces of the injera. We found a good restaurant in town that had a buffet. I ate lunch here twice.
Gonder’s big feature is a big castle grounds next to town, so I made sure to fit in a tour during the day. I am also having problems with sun sensitivity due to the doxycycline, so I went looking for Malarone as malaria prophylaxis replacement. I found a pharmacy that said they didn’t have it, but their supplier around the corner did. They sent a boy with me to the place “around the corner.” After a half-hour walk, we arrived at another pharmacy—a veterinary pharmacy. I decided not to buy anything.

Today marked our transition from Sudan into Ethiopia. The border towns of Metema and Gallabat were separated by a thin piece of rope and a lot of outdated bureaucratic paperwork. We got our exit stamps the night before by filling out an entry form that had “entry” crossed out and “exit” written in. On the Ethiopian side, the process of checking each passport against a non-indexed, non-alphabetized list of unwanted visitors could have taken all day. So once the first few passports started coming through, we all slipped through the border and waited for the TDA staff to deliver our passports in the evening.
The contrasts from one side of the rope to the other were immediately obvious. There were more children everywhere. Their familiar calls of “hello” were replaced by “You you you you you!” Building styles and donkey carts had changed in appearance. As soon as we left the town, the landscape left a huge impression upon us. The endless flat desert was replaced by hills and trees. Temperatures were a little cooler as well. The views of the canyons along the way were stunning.
Camp was next to a small village at the top of a significant hill. An area around the trucks was cordoned off with a piece of colorful string to keep the locals at a semi-comfortable distance. It soon became clear why: when we set up camp, everyone from the village came up to the line and just stood and stared at us until darkness fell and they wandered off to bed.

This was the first morning there were no mosques nearby to help me wake up. Our truck that had faithfully played wake-up music for us every day so far also failed to play music this morning. I can no longer set my alarm either, since it is a feature of my broken iPhone. Considering how tired I tend to be at the end of each day, I’m not surprised that I overslept this morning and frantically struggled to down a bowl of breakfast mush and get my stuff jammed into my locker before the trucks left.

I was pleasantly surprised to see our injured rider back in camp this morning. (I am intentionally leaving out names of injured riders so their friends and family back home can be notified properly.) He wasn’t riding, of course. One more strong rider out of EFI.

Today was our first day of dirt riding. After 49k of pavement, we turned off the paved road and covered the remaining 81k in mostly-corrugated dirt. As people’s abilities in different types of terrain varies, more riders lost EFI today and the trucks were filled to capacity. We were told that all roads should lead to our camp in Azaza that evening, but it turned out not to be the case, as more than 6 riders got lost and rode much further than 81k on dirt. Gizzy arrived at dark, and Eric came in at 7:30PM. Wayne and Patrick ended up taking a completely different (but much longer) route altogether, but still made it back to camp.

The first village I rode through was very cool, with tall grass fences along the road, and happy children and adults cheering us on. After that, attitudes varied by village. In some places locals would clap or sing. In others, people would should incomprehensible syllables, give strange hand signals, or throw sticks and stones. Villages are small with round huts made of mud or grass. Each village has a small water tower with a black & white checkerboard pattern on it.

There was one village offering cold Pepsi in the afternoon. I stopped and the children swarmed around my bike. A man that was referred to as “the police” guarded it while I stood inside the small shop and drank my beverage in front of a hundred sets of curious eyes. A man who seemed to be the chief of the village came in and said hello. Then he insisted that I give him a cigarette. I didn’t have any of course, so I told him no. Then he demanded I give him money. Again, I declined. Then he wanted my bike. I left quickly and finished the day.