jonnywhite

You can feel that we are moving toward more a more ‘westernized’ culture as we travel west across Zambia and Botswana, toward the Kalahari desert. Although the distances have been long (generally 150-200km/day) we have been on paved roads in our crossing and have been stopping for fast food and ice cream at gas stations. We feel like we have reached the promised land, but even so, we continuously emphasize to the ‘new fish’ (new riders) how hard we had it prior to this.

A new group of riders joined us in Livingston for the ‘Khoisan Challenge’, known to the rest of us simply as the last quarter of the trip. Among these is Tom Baxter (tomcatbaxter.blogspot.com), an old friend of mine. Having lived with the tour group for the past 3 months, 24/7, I feel like I have 50 siblings whose ways I am accustomed to, for better and for worse, so seeing the group and the tour through his ‘fresh’ eyes has been an interesting experience.

Livingston is also the home of Victoria Falls, one of the world’s ‘natural wonders’, and the ‘adventure capital’ of Africa. I whitewater rafted the Zambezi river, which leads to the falls, got to spend a little time in a play kayak on the river, and visited the falls like a true tourist. Well, sort of like a true tourist. When you are a very conspicuous white guy on a bicycle in Africa, people are continuously yelling at you to say hello, for attention, to impress their friends, and to sell you things. You sort of learn to block them out. Anyways, I was in a rush to see the falls before sundown and rode through the somewhat disorganized ticket booth and security gate. After I was done riding along the paths along the falls, which included an awesome bridge paralleling the cliff where the water runs off and crossing over the boiling point of the falls (on which you get completely drenched) a security guard caught up to me and informed me that I had ‘run’ the gate and that bicycles were not allowed inside the park area. Satiated, and with the sun going down, I happily conceded to leave.

Since Livingston we have ridden about 710km, 620 of them in the past 4 days, and all in a head or cross-wind. As if this wasn’t enough, the lads decided we should do a team time trial just for a laugh. And a great laugh it was. I found myself on a 4-man team known as the ‘Cookie Monsters’ with current race leader Matt Caretti, ‘prophet doom’ Cory Heitz, and our chef Miles ‘cookie’ (we were the monsters), who actually used to be a world champion time trial cyclist, but took up smoking and drinking instead ten years ago. We came in 2nd, beaten by a bunch of South Africans, but beating Tom’s team by 15 seconds, which was infinitely more important to me as I had a couple drinks on the line. Tom’s team had the fastest 19 year-old cyclist in Canada and our time-trial champ (and a good buddy of mine) Sam Bail, my friend Monty ‘prophet love’, and our hungover mechanic Todd, so they were definitely a threat. The finish time is the third man on your team so the key is to keep your third strongest man strong while the two strongest pull and the fouth generally shells (exhausts) himself early by ‘pulling’ (breaking the wind) for the team until he can’t keep pace any more. Toward the end, on our team, Cory was tiring (being 6’7” he has a harder time drafting, or staying out of the wind, behind another rider) and reverted to his US AirForce Special Ops former self. He began yelling at himself and then told Matt and I to yell at him and berate him to keep him moving. Matt and I basically said ‘uh, OK’ and spent the last 10 minutes yelling everything we could think of at him as we flew toward the finish, neck and neck with the South Africans. This was great entertainment afterwards as we really didn’t know what to yell and were completely exhasted so not erveything that came out made any sense. In fact, none of it did.

On the same leg, another rider was attacked by a pack of wild dogs (endangered species, see pic) and swung his bicycle at them and then rode away, in the wrong direction, but didn't care at the time. He didn't turn around to go back past the wild dogs until he met up with another rider coming the other direction who was slower than he is.

From here we roll to Windhoek. Sand dunes, desert winds (hopefully from the back), and even longer days are ahead, but we are counting down now. We move on a little sadly as we have lost one rider, who has been with us from the start, to a broken arm from a pothole crash. But she’s got spirit. She’s planning to be at the party at the end.