19/02/28, stage 29, Agra Myriam to Yabello

I overslept this morning! Only woke up 10 minutes past 6 while breakfast is served 630. Normally I wake up by the sound of people breaking up their tents, but this morning I had my earplugs still in while they normally fall out during the night… It means I had a good sleep though 🙂

So I left camp last, together with Alex. We had a nice easy ride and soon caught up with the doddlers and we stayed with them. We had coffee, tea and donuts at 25k. For some reason there were seven of us, but the guys buying donuts bought nine donuts. So after our stop there were two donuts left. I volunteered to cary the donuts in my trunk bag for redistribution later today. However, not everyone agreed on me carrying the donuts, but I figured I was the only sensible and responsible person up to the task, so I used my self-assigned Veto right and carried the donuts anyway…

We continued our way and made some climbs and had some marvelous views. We hit the top of the hill and the view was just spectacular. Vibes were good and Vik and me embraced eachother. We had conquered the hill and we were rewarded with this view. And we are in Africa! Hapiness all around. Then followed the descent…

Nearing the end of the descent we found a big crowd of locals surrounding Mike who lay with his bike on the ground on the side of the road. Ingela had been the first on the scene and tried to keep locals at a distance. Lucy, who has a medical background was taking out her first aid kid. Alex and Vik caught up, followed by Ryan the sweep, who got out his phone to try to place the call with our medic. Things at the scene were under control. I asked Ryan whether it was a good idea to ride ahead to lunch to notify the staff and he agreed, just in case he wouldn’t be able to reach Jen. So just a few seconds after reaching the scene I was on my way again.

Lunch was 7k ahead and I came accross the landcruiser speeding towards the scene 1k before lunch. I told Jen the medic the location and some other specifics and then they were off and I was off, feeling glad the call got through to them. I proceeded to lunch at a more leisurly pace. There were some riders left at lunch and of course they wanted to know what happened, but I actually had no clue what happened 😦 So I ended up being of no to little added value in this whole story 🙂 You shouldn’t want me near you in a case like this anyway, so riding ahead was probably the highest achievable for me 🙂

I ate my lunch at an easy pace, but after 45 minutes there was no sign of any of the riders I rode with in the morning. I asked the staff whether I should wait, but they said it was better to just take off and finish the ride, so I did. I just assumed everything would be oke.

Landscapes were fabulous! A really wonderfull riding day. However I was glad to make it to camp and to hear that Mike indeed had a big crash, but that he was oke! He has some serious TDA war wounds to show off, but there is no permanent or longlasting damage and he joined the group again later in the afternoon. It was just amazing how fast everything happened and how a bunch of people that didn’t know eachother 1,5 months ago worked together and managed a situation like this… Well done! And compliments for TDA staff as well!

After Mike rejoined the group I offered him one of the two leftover donuts. I ate the other one myself and thought it was well deserved because in the end it were me and the TDA war wound guy that made it first to camp! We beated the other guys! Vik didn’t agree to this reasoning though and he thought he was the one eligable for the donut, because he had paid for them. I didn’t agree with his reasoning in return, because I caried the donuts for some 95k’s (which included some pretty tough hills!) So tough luck for him 🙂

So a dynamic day today… Hope we don’t have too many of those 🙂 I don’t like to be blamed of unfairly eating a donut while I’m sure I had every right to eat it…

Oh and after today’s 121k this trip is officially my longest bike trip ever, counting 3253k! Keep the k’s comming!