The crash

Jan 29
How do you turn what is supposed to be an easy 123 km day into a terrible day? Well you get into a 2 line peloton coming out of camp and when you are in second position you touch wheels with the person in the front and go down b ringing down 4 other people behind you. Wow did I feel bad. Loads of road rash, Sam on his but, Wane on his quad, lower leg and some pretty bad bruising and Adam on his leg a bit. Adam’s bike was a little messed up too, I think he finished the day without rear brakes. Me, well the road rash is pretty bad, but my confidence was shattered. Everyone is super nice about it and completely understanding, but I feel like shit about it. I guess the lessons learned would be to not follow quite so close and also to always have your hands ready on the breaks and not on the airo bars where you have no control. Luckily no one was seriously hurt but it was a real trip to know that under slightly different circumstances I may have caused someone’s trip to end with a broken arm or leg, or even for someone to loose there EFI because they couldn’t ride.

After the crash everyone stopped and Steph did some triage medical to get us all to lunch in smaller groups. I hung at the back of a 5 person group for a bit then decided to go a bit faster and rode the last 15 k into lunch alone. After lunch I left alone expecting the lull I normally get after lunch but it never really came so I met up with Dan (American from outside of Reno) and promised not to take him out if we could ride together. We rode the shorter than expected 40 ish km to camp which made for a total of about 109 km today. Still quite a bit after the 2 straight 150 km days, but I was lucky enough to get in about 1 pm.

Priorities in camp were clear, first shower, second laundry. It is our first rest day since Luxor, even though we had the 2 non cycling days on the boat I had quite the collection of dirty clothes. We were told that we would have to do our laundry ourselves so I decided to jump on the boat and get in line for a tub. It was quite the experience to hand wash my clothes. First off, my clothes were really dirty, like insanely wash 3 things and the water would be brownish gray and I would dump it out and start again. It also took about 2 hours to wash it, and another hour rinse it. 3 cycling jerseys, 3 pairs of shorts, 2 cotton t shirts, 3 pairs of boxers and 5 pairs of socks, 3 hour process. Insane, but hey, I learned something new today. I was instructed that the most important thing is to get all the soap out so I hope I did a good enough job rinsing so I don’t have bubbles coming out my shorts as I sweat down the road.

After that was done and the tent was up I headed into town to get some food. Had a great meal of cheese, bread, falafel and half a chicken for the equivalent of 5 US$. I was impressed. After that we found the internet café but it didn’t have word on the computers so I had to come back to the camp and turn everything into notepad.

Speaking of camp we are in the Dongola Zoo. No cages or anything, but some big grassy spots and some concrete statues of animals. It is actually one of the nicest camp site I have ever had. Maybe not the most scenic, with people watching over the walls while we showered with a garden hose, but great soft ground to put your tent up. Not enough trees for shade in the morning, but who needs to sleep in on a rest day anyway.

Ok that is all for now, I think I will try and head back and post this and the last couple of blogs tonight so I can read the comments tomorrow.

As always hope everyone is doing great and loving life. Justin thanks for the message, glad you are liking the place. Stranger whose name I forgot that wanted to link to my site go for it, but please remember that the ride is to raise money for the LiveSTRONG charity and maybe you or your clients would like to donate by clicking on the livestrong logo on the top right of the main page of this site. And to all my family thank you so much for reading and the comments. It makes every rest day exciting to be able to read what people think. Steph, I remember that skate in the cold and eating the beaver tails it was a lot of fun!

Talk to everyone later

Rick