jonnywhite

Egypt: check.

With a few 'directional difficulties' I pulled into Aswan where we are pitched in an old sort of run down garden after a nice easy 6 hour ride today. Tomorrow we board a boat to cross a river (visible on a larger map) and enter Sudan. Allegedly the roads are very bad and also there is limited net access - however the Sudanese are supposed to be the nicest people in Africa and I am pumped to see the country.

The riding has become a routine that we are very used to and if I can keep well I am confident at this point about pushing through. We hit 1,000km today and have 11,000 left to go. It really is a great way to see a continent - lots of time to think on the bike while passing slowly enough to see everything but quickly enough that most of the kids have trouble hitting you with rocks. When a kid does throw them, spit, or jump in the way, we sometimes try to discourage the behavior, as more riders will be behind us, by chasing the kid down and yelling at him (they don't understand english but they get the message), never touching him though. Two days ago our tour leader and another rider got a handful of gravel in the face and the tour leader chased the kid through the village and rode his bicycle though the front door the kids 'house' and yelled at the kid and told his mom what he did. The vast majority (99.9%) wave and yell and smile and you feel quite welcome, or yell 'moneymoneymoney', which has gotten irritating to the point of screaming, as everyone in Egypt (as mentioned in my last post) thinks white people carry money in their spandex and are going to through it as you go past.

Anyways it'll be a while before another one - hope all's well.

Pic yoinked from Catherine Corne's (a fellow rider) blog - This is the start line one fine morning in the desert.

http://catavelo.monblogue.com/

Up until yesterday, the trip could be broken down into two sections, riding and camping. The riding is long, sometimes bloody long (2 days ago began with a 40km climb and then 100km over sandstone plateaus) especially just getting used to it, but also great exercise, good fun, and good comeraderie if you opt to slow down and talk to another rider. The scenery goes from fascinating to sandy. Mostly sandy so far. The camping has been best described by fellow rider deb in a concise spontaneous sentence that bewildered me with the amount of truth and insight it contained. She said "If I wasn't so hungry I'd be asleep". We have been eating 'bread' and 'cheese' with boiled eggs for breakfast and the same with 'salami' and fruit for lunch. Dinner is a feeding frenzy for 50 similar to an aquarium of piranhas, prepared like only our Egyptian travel crew (because they won't let the desired crew into Egypt) can. To my amazement, today in Luxor I discovered that there actually is more food in Egypt than the five things we've been eating and will bring this to the attention of the cooks if I can find a translator. I have been probably averaging 10 or 11 hours of sleep a night and could use more. The entire camp is out like a light immediately after dinner from exhaustion, but it still amazes me what our bodies have dealt with.

We had our first rest day in Luxor. Luxor is a filthy and sandy combination of ancient history, markets, tourists, hagglers, militia, and pollution. You cannot walk down a sidewalk for 10 feet without running into rubble from a torn down wall that looks 50 years old and was never cleaned up, a tree that the sidewalk was built around but you can not get around staying on the sidewalk, or a table trying to sell you the same thing you've seen the whole way there (statuettes, scarves, papyrus). The city was clearly designed by the same people who thought of giving the sixteen year olds on every street corner machine guns. You have to swat away merchants and keep your eyes open for vehicles or animals or combinations of the two. The honking is endless and the language is loud and aggressive. The redeeming quality of the city, however, is an important one. They have ice cream. I don't normally eat ice cream but I haven't had milk since leaving and have eaten mostly desert mush or stale bread for a week while averaging 130km/day so a little food selection was almost a euphoric experience.

People are starting to feel the effects of the pace, foreign environment, and lifestyle. Travelers illnesses (use your imagination) and cycling-related issues (again...) are not uncommon. I have been quite healthy but found myself in a headached stupor with aching muscles and shivering one evening and morning - a couple friends helped me pack and John the nurse gave me a couple ibuprofin if needed and I made it through just fine. I think this will be a common theme of the trip and I feel completely safe with the people and support staff we have here, caring, smart, effective, and competent.

I began on a few negative notes to communicate that it is not sunshine and lollipops biking in Egypt. I have asked myself more than once on the road at the 90km mark with 50km to go or in my tent at night having to get out to relieve myself for the 4th time (we drink a lot of water to not die): What I am doing here, what possible reason is there to do this? After a rest day I have a couple answers: We learn through experience, the more you experience, the more you learn. I don't know what I can do and I won't unless I try.

Camping on the beach at Safaga - This shot was taken to make it look nice.

Safaga is a small town along the red sea 540km from Cairo. We have biked that distance in the past 4 days and all is quite well. I am keeping pace much better than I expected given my, some would argue, lax training regiment of biking recreational in the summer, biking indoors while watching movies in the fall, and eating as much cheese and chocolate as possible over Christmas.

Tonight we are camped on a beach, covered in garbage, on the red sea. Previous nights have been in the desert, which is also covered in the garbage along the side of the road. The desert is quite peaceful and somewhat interesting, but also irritating for one reason. The desert is flat. This means there is no where to go to the bathroom out of sight from camp. Needless to say, we are getting to know each other quite well. It is difficult to summarize the experiences we have had but I will try.

The desert we have been riding across is just what it looks like in the movies, sand. It's pretty cold at night and pretty hot during the day. We found a camel skeleton on a piss break yesterday. There is an interesting sense of awe you get now and then, passing sandstone mountains or arriving at the red sea. There are wild dogs that live, I suspect, of the garbage scattered in the desert, especially along the side of the road. They like shoes, and one cyclist lost 3 at night to the dogs, which he later recovered. I was missing a cycling shoe (very difficult to cross Africa without) one morning before the start and chased down a couple dogs, who, confirming their response to the accusations, were innocent. Our nurse, John, found my shoe tucked into the bus about which I was embarrassed, particularly since we are all just getting to know each other so we hang on anything we can remember about each other to start copyrightable. Needless to say, "Where was your shoe?" has started most of mine since. I got bored with the truth and have switched to accusing Martians.

The locals are friendly and at times interesting. They want to know where we are from and our names, and every passing car honks at us. Oftentimes they are trying to sell us something and as often, they are just plain friendly. I can share an example that will communicate the reasons for the latter. Five of us sat around the campfire last night with 8 Egyptian army guards, who are protecting us in Egypt and are not seen without their AK's and shotguns. One of our guards, Ali, who doesn't speak any English was having such a great time with us around the fire that he decided to show us a martial arts form (like a kata) for our entertainment and sing us a song. When he finished the song, the tough looking young man cried and the one guard who spoke a little English explained "he is happy". To put this in perspective, consider the life of an Egyptian army officer. They are posted regularly in sandstone huts without bathrooms along the highway, if not just on the side of the road, and always wave when we pass. What are they doing? Watching for enemies maybe, or just waiting to be posted, day after day and year after year perhaps, in the empty desert. It's no wonder that the young man was so empassioned to be interacting with a few unusual foreigners. He took a liking to Lyle, who speaks a few words of Arabic, and told him "I love you" and asked him to sing him 'Michael Jackson' after his song and tears. Needless to say there were a few uncomfortable moments when Lyle could only crank out 6 words of 'Billy Jean' in return as the guards looked on eagerly with their machine guns on their laps.

The riding has been beautiful to make up for the heavy distances covered in this week which I consider to be training. We have mostly had a tailwind for the past 3 days, after getting out of Cairo along an insane highway. There has been one crash at about 40km/h, but the tough young lady is back on a bike (hers was totalled) this afternoon and I suspect will continue riding to the end. There is a lot of esteem placed on a titled called EFI and many people are trying to achieve it. EFI means you powered yourself the whole way, even when camp in 10km through the sand off the road. What does EFI stand for? "Every Inch" I am going for it and feel good for now. There have been some saddle sores and pains that have slowed people down but everyone seems to be coping well, myself among them. I am exhausted and sore today, and we have our toughest day of riding in Egypt tomorrow so I must get back to camp, get clean in the sea, check up on my bike, and stretch again.

Thanks for following and please feel free to post anything you like, as I am just now forwarding this blog out to the masses (I wanted you to have something to read before sending the email).

And that start is going to be a sight worth writing about: 40 riders from all over the world in full racing regalia, in the sand, below the behemoth pyramids - surrounded by desert extending a 2 week camel ride to Libya in one direction and with Cairo's clay huts and skyscapers further off in the other direction. There will be camels, horses, press, cameras, cars, donkeys, kids asking for money, beggars selling headdresses and beads, tour guides selling information, and sweaty, stinking, filthy cyclists in the middle of it all. I can't wait.

I visited the pyramids yesterday by camel, known as Mr. Hiccups to me. These beasts, though perfectly adapted to the desert, have forcefully uncooperative personalities. They lumber over horses, gurgle what looks like half chewed grass mixed with mud and sand and saliva, and spit at you. To exacerbate the conflict based on our personality differences, Mr. Hiccups was, to my great dismay when riding 8 feet in the air, clumsy. He tripped over rocks and ledges that the other camels had no problems with. I was on a horse for the first five minutes of the ride while they pulled Mr. Hiccups either from retirement or from a school for delinquent camels; In the spirit of adventure, and having been on the horse which was easy enough to control, I told the guide I wanted to control the camel myself. We had our differences at first, but by the end of the ride I was able to make him run, stop, kneel, turn 360's, and to our great amusement run him into other camels that were lead-tied to each other, when the guides weren't looking. I say 'to our great amusement' because I am assuming that Mr. Huccups was laughing when he turned around and gurgled at me bearing his teeth, but then again I'm not a zoologist, I suppose he could have been trying to tell me he was hungry or that he liked me or something else for that matter.

I have met about half our riders. Great people. Outgoing, open mided, generous, and there is a great sense of camaraderie, even just in meeting someone for the first time who is taking on the same journey when you both have the same knowing smile that says "what the hell have we gotten ourselves into?" just as much as "nice to meet you". You might think that there would be little other than biking for strangers from all over the world to discuss but we have entertained ourselves greatly with insults, feigned infighting, nationalism, stereotypes, and similarities. One fun and frequent conversation has been talking about how everyone reacts at home when we told them about the trip... endless amusement. Everyone thinks we're crazy, taking on 10 countries and 11,900 countries, and we think they're crazy, staying at home in the 9 to 5. I suspect that neither side is really correct or that both are, but if nothing else it is a common bond we share. Whether these conversations will solve the mystery of life or not remains to be seen, there will be a lot of spare time in the evenings once the tents are up and the bikes are clean.

I put the bike together yesterday and replaced parts that were damaged in shipping. It felt great to ride today and any intimidation has drained away or transformed into excitement. I have much to be thankful for and much to look forward to.