Mzungu Eriki on a bike: One ride short

03 January 2012

One ride short

I failed a clean sweep of 5 rides, as in Amani Mtns I missed a ride, but I managed 4 great rides on our week of holidays.

If I had a better way of carrying mtn bike on the pickup I could ride more. In order to ride it entails unloading half the camping equipment to take the bike out.

Ride I.
We celebrate Christmas Day in Bernice's home village Suji, in the south Pare mountains . Boxing day I jump out of bed at first light, tired of my brother in law's snoring. I also needed a good ride before the long car drive to the coast.

Pare Mountains has gotten rain and it looks lush and green.

I ride a contour road out through the other side of the valley through Gonjanza and slogged up to the pass going to Bwambo. It was an exhilerating ride I am glad I did not miss, despite it being a repeat ride.

I have another agenda on this ride, to photograph rock masonry buildings like these. I post more on my building blog here.

A church above and CCM building. (CCM being the ruling political party)

I look back to my father in law's house. Suji valley looks so good when green.

And if you focus differently like below you see Mnt Kilimanjaro.

I shower and we drive for hours, ride a ferry....

and get to paradise on the beach, hot and lazy paradise.

Ride II
We are invited for the week to Dave and Trude's place on the Indian ocean coast at Pembe Abwe, south of Pangani. It is hot as expected. The next day in the late afternoon Thad and Mike take me up to Pangani ferry but it looks like rain up the Pangani River so we check out a new beach lodge and ride home. Smooth flat sandy roads and good riding buddies.

Ride III
We stay 5 nights at Pembe Abwe with Daudi and Trude and I do a beach ride the day before last. The wind blows me south for an hour or so and it takes twice as long on the return into the wind. Beach riding is mostly easy, but there were stretches where it would go soft on me but I learned to go closer or in the water at those moments.

Missed Ride
In Amani we arrive to late for a ride. It is New Years and we watch the news in the guest house and crash before 10 pm.

I get up early the next morning but dont want to mess with unpacking to get to my bike and the reverse process for a 2 hour ride. We check out our property and house. We now have a road up to the house. Now we need a bridge over the river and we can drive up to the house and stay her e. I am gathering granite stones, good shapes and will build a rock walled brick arched roof and we will live happily ever after.

Ride IV.
Back to Suji. I get messed around with a tyre repair on the pickup. So much easier fixing my bike by myself. I have no idea about tubeless radial and am at the mercy of a punk at the service station. I choose the wrong place , but the worst is that i have to listen to and spend an hour with a punk who cant see the bigger picture of life. In the end he asks for employment! I really should tell him that he is cutting his own throat, but I don't think the idea will get accross. He can't self evaluate, he only sees he wants more than what he has, and thinks there is a short cut.

I get up but eat breakfast and then take off for Tae. They have done alot of work on roads, still very steep on the other side and rough but check out these retaining walls.

Normally i ride through that pass and then down, but this time i see what looks like a new road and i ask primary school boys and they say it is a shortcut.