As good as it gets.

I emailed the arusha bikers mailing list that I would ride a slow short ride on Sunday. Those who said they were coming woke up with a headache Sunday morning. I gather there was a ladies thing somewhere.

My buddy Bent and his son Dishon joined Nashesha, Dina, and I. We went straight up the mountain. Dishon has just finished first grade and did really well. Nashesha rode his bike some so he could rest on the tandem. We didn't make the forest as planned but as you can see the end result was smiles. On the way down Dishon learned how to descend steep hills.

Bent recently came back from Denmark with a big box of jerseys from a club that changed sponsors. He had some for our junior "team" . Nashesha wore her first bike jersey and looked stunning.

In the middle of the ride she was riding ahead of me. Her hair was billowing out of the helmet and the jersey looking good, and she was working up a hill. I thought " that is about as good as it gets for a parent." To make it sweeter, she reminded me she needs bike shoes and that she asked permission to come with me on the wednesday club ride.

It doesn't end there, as after the ride she wanted to wear the jersey to a birthday party (until I pointed out it smelled of sweat).

sigh.

Karibu Arusha Race 2010

Every first weekend of June our club has a race. The past two years it became 3 days. It coincides with Karibu Tanzania Fair, an annual fair for tour and hotel operators to drum up more business and make deals among themselves.

This year we separated from them and they did not even notice we weren't there. We had it second weekend of June so various key players could be there. This year it was again 3 days but 4 stages, we snuck in a 8 km uphill time trial.

As I mentioned in a post a few weeks ago, my job is more demanding these days. The weeks leading up to the race were even worse than normal and as it came down to the date it became clear I would miss at least one day of the race, Friday.

I went to the start of the long stage on Friday. About 180km but the first 30 km controlled (slow) through town. It was hard but i managed not to run home for my bicycle. Back at work it was slow until noon and then everything went to hell until the evening, when we replace a Hard drive on the machine that controls bandwidth.

I decided to go join them for the longer stage back to arusha, 110 km or so back to Arusha into the wind. So I got up and left around 9am and rode the 120km to the start, ate lunch with them and tried to race back. The first 35km is flat and some short hills and i could stay up, after that there were several long hills and I dropped off with Thad to wait for Mike and Henry and we rode in as a group.

By the end my feet were going asleep. I threw up all the lunch with 50km remaining but recovered and held my own. Kind of a strange way to warm up for a bike race but at least I got in the race