April 19

Today was the 129 mile day.  The day was a beautiful day.  It started out cold and I needed a jacket at the start of the ride.  After all it is fall down here.  Yes, I said fall.  All of you are now starting to shed the woes of winter and getting some warmer spring days.  But down here they are starting to think about winter.  The mornings do have that crisp fall feel.  It is like mid October in terms of their season.  Anyway... the day started to warm up as the sun accelerated its ascent into the sky.  The clouds of the prior nights thunderstorm were being dispatched and the promise of a picture perfect day was at hand.  And dare I say it... yes, there was even a hint of a tailwind.

But events that unfolded pre-empted a full day of riding.  The riders were stretched over many kilometers as people were pounding out the excessive miles.  A couple hours into my ride I heard a sound behind me that you don't want to hear.  I heard the sound of a crashing bicycle.  The person behind me had hit a pothole and went down.  I turned my bike around and went back.  The initial scene was not good as the person was lying on the road and not moving.  The riders knee was torn wide open from the pavement and there were bumps in the upper leg that should not be there.  Needless to say it was a tough situation.  I stopped another rider and sent them for the sweep rider.  We summoned the SAG truck as a trip to the hospital was a requirement.  I went along in the truck to assist.  We drove back to the nearest town to get medical attention but it was Sunday and everything was closed.  The remoteness of our situation became apparent.  The next closest town was the city of Windhoek.  We were in Botswana and Windhoek was in Namibia.  So we had to head towards another country and a 330 kilometer drive (over 200 miles).   A long ambulatory ride and a border crossing to get to medical attention.  Thank goodness the situation wasn't life threatening.  

It took 8 hours from accident to treatment at a hospital.  The the end of the tale was...  the knee sustained lacerations down to the muscle and all the X-rays showed no broken bones.  But no more riding for several weeks.  All in all a good outcome for what in all first appearances was a serious injury.

It made for a very long day, one that I don't want to repeat.

The leaves on the trees are turning colors down here.