jonnywhite

It has taken me a while to write this final entry. It’s a little intimidating to try to sum up 4 months in which a nutty dream became an intense reality. That reality hit extremes of hopelessness and euphoria, and just about every stop in between.

We rolled into South Africa and then Cape Town in good spirits. I had thought through the finish line ceremonies and goodbyes, and despite (and due to) warnings that it would get emotional, I was nonchalantly videotaping all the way in. I stood at the line filming riders meeting their families and loved ones when someone tapped me on the shoulder. Was it someone asking for change? It seemed unlikely but not impossible. Maybe press? Probably. Interviewers and video cameras were swarming the riders. I turned to face my girlfriend Melanie.

But she was in Toronto. Or at least I had been looking forward, since the trip began, to flying to Toronto to see her at the end of the trip. But she was here. And so not in Toronto. It took me about 4 hours to get over the shock, confusion, and excitement. Mel had spent two weeks touring Cape Town and Namibia, hitting a few of the same spots as the tour only days before or afterwards, but had waited until the finish to surprise me. Once I became conscious of reality again we traveled South Africa together. I have never been more surprised in my life than I was at the finish and I have never been happier in my life than in the past two weeks. How’s that for a nice ending?

And so it’s over. The riders return to their homes all over the world sure that no one else will understand what it was like riding through the sand and corrugation in Sudan, the hills in Ethiopia, or the desert in northern Kenya. No friends or family will relate entirely when you tell them about camping for four months in ten countries with 50 strangers-become-siblings of all ages. The hard-core racers have their results, and to me these befit the people who earned them. A few of us have special pride and a bond of suffering in having ridden every f’n inch of the way. We covered 11,900km in 96 riding days, also climbing more meters on the bicycle in elevation than I will on my four connecting flights home.

And so what was it all about? What did I learn? Well, for starters, the nice thing about taking chances is that the outcomes are unknown (redundant, I know but I’m going somewhere with this). I came to Africa very uncertain about the tour, the countries I was crossing, my riding ability, and my odds of finishing. Although I thought it would be rewarding to do the trip I had no idea why or how. In the end, the lessons I learned are the last things I expected.

1. Making a decision to do something is the hardest part. Once you have made a decision and thrown out all your excuses, other options, and insecurities, you find a way. In the end, no matter how hard it was, you will say “that wasn’t so hard afterall” and will be ready for new challenges, with more opportunities for growth, in the future.

2. Seeing life from a fatalist perspective it is depressing. If you think you “have to” deal with things you don’t want to (e.g. riding a bike through mud for a week) you will not be very pleasant to be around. If you instead see life as a series of decisions in which you can either challenge yourself to grow or back down and stagnate, things that used to be “have to’s” become “get to’s”. You become thankful for whatever you are facing, no matter how tough, because it is your chance to grow.

3. Conquering something alone is satisfying, but does not compare to sharing something with someone you care about. We are hardwired, as a social species, to be happiest when we are loved, loving, and sharing, rather than when we are accomplishing things for ourselves. It took me a long, long time to learn this and it is the lesson from this trip that I am most grateful for. Best of all, I know who to thank.



This is the end. Thank you so much for reading. I have learned that I have more readers than I anticipated (this was supposed to be a time-saving device). Thank you for giving me the opportunity to share a part of my life with you and I genuinely hope that you will be so kind as to tell me about yours.

Until then.

Jonny White

www.jonnywhite.ca
jonnywhite@gmail.com

Winhoek is a distant memory. Once we left, the road got slightly hillier and people started talking about the finish. The eight riders who joined us in the last month, and were just starting their own adventure, bit their tongues to put up with 50 cyclists who spoke of little other than the end. We were putting in long days of riding when mentally we were already there. With a set routine and the end in sight (so to speak, we still had a couple thousand km’s), we became antsy for distractions from the agony of waiting for the finish line. We came up with a few. The evenings were now peppered with events. Prophet-run blindfolded tent-erection contests, tire-changing races, trivia, and singing and playing music about the trip entertained our big family. Throw in a naked kilometer in Namibia (that was extended to 15km to the amusement/utter confusion of the locals), some funky riding tricks (see Superman pic), a great crash (riding 50km/h downhill into a dam with unseen knee-deep water while blaring rock’n’roll on the headphones), and preparations for the finish, and I had enough to keep me laughing all the way to Cape Town. On that note I’ll add a little story about my friend Tom Baxter.

Tom joined us at Victoria Falls, and despite being a ‘new fish’ he integrated into the group quite comfortably, to the point of being one of the few to participate in the much-anticipated naked kilometer. This is a legacy performed on many bike tours, not just a perverted gag, so on a sunny day in Namibia five of us decided our tour deserved the honor as well and stripped down. With our biking clothes in our packs and tied around our handlebars, and lots of giggling, we began our bold trek. Having been in biking gear for 14 weeks the change was actually quite comfortable and welcome, to the point of out-weighing any shyness, so we decided to keep going. Plus there wasn’t much traffic. After six or seven kilometers we noticed Tom was missing. He was having fun when we last saw him, and standing around naked is much more awkward than riding naked (I don’t know exactly why, but can tell you it is), so we kept going. We would later learn that Tom, in his eagerness or anxiety, had left his clothes on the side of the road. This meant doubling back naked to get them, which would not be a big deal except that there was a significant contingent of 30 or so slower (and generally older/more mature) riders behind us that he would have to pass, naked, on his way back to look for his shorts in the desert. Our plan, when we discovered this eventuality, was to deny the existence of any ‘naked kilometer’ event to the rest of the group, singling Tom out as a rogue unaccompanied backwards-riding nudist. Tom, however, revealed his plight to another rider who happened to have been wearing two pairs of biking shorts (to alleviate saddle-sores) and got away with the blunder to everyone else’s chagrin.

At this point I must honor Lyle, a fellow Canadian and good friend throughout the trip, who heard about the naked kilometer while passing other riders on the road. Not wanting to be left out, Lyle stripped bare and rode, otherwise as usual, with his (clothed) wife Krista, to the bewilderment of riders passed and passing, not to mention traffic, who knew nothing about the naked kilometer.

We are fast approaching Cape Town. Just a matter of carrying out the routine and keeping the legs moving for another couple weeks.