Day 40 - Feb 17

Today was a better day.  I plugged in my earphones and pedaled along to CCR, Van Morrison, and my favorite music.  I turned it up loud and just moved across the landscape at a fairly leisurely pace.  This made a world of difference.  It was an attitude adjustment day.  :)

It was also a bad day in that we lost another rider today.  We did not lose him to illness or fatigue or being fed up.  We lost him to a car.  He was riding along and was hit from behind by a car.  The car came along at a pretty good pace and the side view mirror almost hit a different rider.  Once the driver missed the first rider he repositioned his car to where his tire was right on the shoulder of the road.  He never saw the second rider and just went right into him. The rider was first hit by the bumper and then the side view mirror and rode the entire length of the vehicle.  He was knocked unconscious for a bit of time.  The result was a fairly severe concussion, a dislocateded elbow, a broken arm and a fractured orbital bone with lacerations all over.  He was rushed to a hospital in Addis Ababa.  They are going to airlift him out as soon as he is able.

The drivers here as I have said before are very bad.  

This is a picture of a coca cola truck that is overturned.  This is on a straight away. The load and the speed with which he was traveling resulted in this.

We see at least one or two of these a day as we are traveling.  The drivers and the loads they are carrying are dangerous.  Any DOT in the US would have the loads off the roads as well as these drivers.