Odds And Ends

I warned you guys there would end of the trip lists . . . and here’s another one! Please enjoy the top ten things that didn’t seem to fit in any post but are interesting or amusing (or totally vulgar and unnecessary, but I feel like including anyway):

10: Did you know that I managed to keep a relatively decent pedicure on my toes from Cairo to Capetown? The one I had done the day I left New York, lasted until Addis, then I found a spa in Nairobi and another one in Lusaka. I missed getting one in Windhoek in favor of a haircut so I could roll into Cape Town in style. Yes, I am prissy, even on a bike.

9. In Egypt our police escort often took cell phone photos of us during lunch and in camp. In fact, I am pretty certain that one officer got a picture of me using the ladies room behind a bush one day. He and his friend then asked to have pictures taken with me and inquired into my marital status. No thanks dude. The prevalence of cell phones, with their attached cameras, made for an interesting twist to traveling abroad. Rather than being the one behind the camera, I often found myself being shot by several onlookers at a time riding through even the most remote of villages.

8. The soda wars are alive and well in the north, with Egypt pretty evenly divided between Coke and Pepsi, but in the south, Coke has creamed Pepsi and left nary a shop selling the alternative cola.

Brave soldier in the fight for soda supremacy.

7. We had a camp in Botswana on the grounds of a hotel that had an ostrich walking around the camping area. It seemed most interested in rain flies and poked its head under quite a few.

6. I have a confession to make: I eat cute animals. In Sossusvlei our lodge had a game meat buffet and I tried all the adorable antelopes and other critters I had admired on earlier safaris. Since then I have taken every opportunity to partake in springbok and ostrich and other game meat. It’s gotten so bad that on one of my game drives here in South Africa with my parents we heard a kudu barking in the bush. When our tracker identified the call as a kudu, my mother asked what that was. I said it was a large antelope to which she replied, “Oh yeah, that’s the one that looks more like pork, right?” Right, but so very, very wrong.

5. There are a large variety of peanut butters available throughout Africa that vary greatly in quality. After eating PB&J for one to two meals a day for several months, I consider myself a bit of a peanut butter connoisseur. None of the varieties locally available compare to Jiff or Skippy, but some came close. Others were just awful. The dreaded Mr. P was the worst as it was completely separated upon opening with the peanut oil on top and the crusty peanut paste on the bottom. If the first person to open the jar did not take the time to mix the oil all the way to the bottom, you were looking at a good day or two of very dry peanut butter for breakfast.

The dreaded Mr. P.

4. The last night of the Tour a group of us stayed in a cute little B&B adjacent to the camp site. It was run by a kooky Afrikaans couple who seemed to be entirely overwhelmed by the presence of customers. When I ordered a hot chocolate in the restaurant, the wife looked at me and said, “My husband does drinks.” and walked off with a look on panic in her eyes. Back in the room, Annalise and I were admiring the photos covering the wall of an elderly couple strolling down the beach with a tiny white dog in tow. And by “admiring” I mean we were making fun of them because they were truly awful. They looked like the pictures that come in 5×7 picture frames from Target, except they were blown up and mounted in giant driftwood frames. Upon closer inspection we realized that the couple in the photo was the couple running the hotel. Sensational! We visited friends in another room and discovered that they had a separate batch of Sears Photo Studio pictures of the proprietors, this time posing awkwardly in a forest. The whole thing was so odd that I had to take a picture of their pictures in our room. Enjoy!

I have no words . . .

3. Alcohol is illegal in Sudan. We assumed there would be a black market for alcohol in Khartoum but it was impossible to find. Apparently the Chinese who run the hotel we stayed at, and are allowed to import booze for their own use, would sell it to longstanding clients of the hotel. One of the riders got a price quote of ten dollars for a single beer. Unfortunately as one night customers, we did not qualify.

2. I’m not sure how to put this delicately, but when you are living out in the bush with sixty people and no modern “facilities,“ you cannot just go to the bathroom and walk away. When you do a Number Two, you need to bury it so it does not pose a health risk to the camp or the nearby community. To facilitate the burying process, the TDA provided shovels, located at the back of the trucks, to take with you when you went to the “ladies room.“ For convenience sake, the “shit shovels” as they were affectionately known, were kept at the back of the trucks–right in the middle of where everyone congregates after the ride and where dinner is eaten. There is no way to walk into a crowd of people, pick up a three foot long garden shovel and walk away nonchalantly. Everyone knows what you have and what you plan to do with it, which created an instant and bizarre familiarity with the digestive habits of your fellow travelers.

Because it was so public, the shit shovel and the activities related to it, were much discussed amongst the riders and all stigma was quickly removed from conversations regarding, as a friend from home calls it, “the brown word.“ All in all the shit shovel played a crucial, but sometimes complicated role in the social life of the Tour. For example, one of the riders, who wishes to remain anonymous, asked me near the beginning of the Tour, “So, if the guy you like asks you where the shit shovel is, that means he’s not interested. Right?” Under normal circumstances, I would say yes, but in the world of the TDA, that could be considered flirting.

1. I cannot believe that in all these posts I have not talked much about my bike. Her name is The Tortoise (slow and steady) and she is a steel frame, front suspension, fixed-tail 29er mountain bike. Specifically, a Rocky Mountain Hammer. Other riders who have gone for a spin on her have described her as “riding on a cloud” or as a “fluffy tank.” Ideal for the rough African roads, but maybe not well suited for Route 9, I decided to leave her in Africa. At the end of the Tour, I donated her to the TDA Foundation. She will live out her days in the loving care of a local health care worker who will use her to increase health care services to remote areas.

The Tortoise.