Day 47 - Feb 24

Had a good day of cycling.  We headed out from our camp through kilometer after kilometer of torn up road.  The Chinese are building roads all throughout Africa.  They are doing this in order to tap into the natural resources.  In this case, they have torn up vast stretches of road and not replaced it.  In many places the road is just loose rock and some gravel thrown in.  It is tough cycling. 

We did 75 miles across varied terrain with of course climbing.  The climbing associated with the ride was 1,422 meters.  As the day went on the terrain began to change.  After lunch it went from trees, banana plants and colorful bushes to semi arid then very arid conditions.  It was amazing the transformation.  

In one section as I was riding up a steep hill a local kid ran alongside of me.  His name was Eli Abdul.  He spoke little English.  He kept asking the same questions all the kids do.  What your name? Where are you go? Where you come?  But the interesting thing of this was what came of the answer to where are you go?!  I said Nairobi.  He then said, what that?  I replied Kenya.  And he replied ...  What Kenya?  Here is the country less than 300 kilometers to the south of his village and he does not even know it.  His world is very small, his understanding does not go beyond his village.  This is a very different world than we know.

Some have asked how my bike is handling this trip.  So far it is performing very well.  The conditions it is going through are so much more difficult than that of my cross US trip.  The roads in some cases are great, in others coarse and corrugated and in many cases, lately, non existent to extremely difficult.  The bike is taking it all in stride.  Scott, I am so glad we talked about the bar end shifters and I took your advice and went with them.  I have long since gone to friction shifting and it has been great.  Many others are adjusting their index shifters due to conditions.  The only thing that would be good could be the addition of shocks.  Although that would add significant weight.  I like the 22.5 pound weight of my bike as I can get her up and running quite easily.   The V brakes have need some fiddling with but that is fairly easy to do on the road.  In summary, I would give my bike an A+ for handling all that Africa has served up so far.  Optimum part of that is... so far.  There is plenty left ahead.

And to end this with the good news....  Only two cycle days left in Ethiopia!!!  Yay!  Yippee!  Yahoo!!!

This is a termite mound or should I say skyscraper.  They say the termite nest goes under ground deeper than it goes up.  This one must be unbelievable in size.  These are all over the area we rode through in the afternoon.

Camels have reappeared in this now arid area we are traveling through.  They are smaller than those in Egypt and Sudan.

This is a common occurrence... either cattle or sheep blocking the road or forcing a course correction.