29 November 2012

Charged my phone on way home from KIA airport

Yesterday I had an "extra-ordinary" board meeting (we are actually called the Policy Advisory Committee) of TzNIC to finish up the budget.  It was a short meeting and I really need to rethink this flying to meetings.

Anyway rode my bike the 65ish km from home to Kilimanjaro airport. I wanted to leave 0445 but left at 0500. Cheusi rode with me for about 40 minutes. I recently rewired my bicylce to put better wires with more protection and to put a toggle switch for the lights and add a E-werk power controller. I will talk about the E-werk later. I thought there was alot of traffic for 5am but it wasn't so bad. Sometimes the oncoming vehicles blinded me, but shading my eyes dramatically seemed to help drivers dim their lights for me. I cranked strongly as I was behind schudule. No stops at arrived at 0700 , exactly two hours riding. The first and last parts had me struglling a bit with wind. Immediately I found Innocent, the caretaker of my bicycle.

So there middle right is my toggle switch for the lights.  There are a ton of clips so I can replace part of the wiring.
Here is a closeup of the E-werk controller.
So I caught the 0710 flight back today.  Found my bike A- OK, loaded up, changed clothes.  Plugged my phone into the E-Werk and charged it while riding home.  The ride home was 3 1/4 hours including a longish breakfast stop in Kikatiti.   It was fully charged when i stopped for breakfast.

Two milk tea, pastry, and water cost $1.25.  In the airport at 6am I had a tea and Croisant for $4.

Back to the E-werk.  So with this devise I can charge any USB device, and several at a time,  I can also wire in other devices and change the output up to 13.3 v.  That is not enough for my current laptop but will work on that. 

Arriving at the office my phone was fully charged off the grid.

On the last climb up to Arusha I passed a guy on a mtn bike and later found him hanging on me.  He hung on as I picked up speed into town, going about 35kph.  Then I heard a big crash and turned to see him down.  He had bad scrapes on his face and arms and a bent crank arm.  I had him wash with my water and sent him with a bystander to a clinic to get cleaned up.  He says he got something in his eye but I think he just lost control from inexperience.

Dave Conroy stayed here and stored some stuff here on his cycle africa trip.  He had too much stuff and left me this USP battery pack, USB strip, and USB AA/AAA battery charger.  So I can charge a bunch of stuff while riding.  Here is was charging them all including the phone.

26 November 2012

It is green!

It rained two weeks ago for the first time in 5 months.  Within a week it greened up and now everything is green and the view is obscured by leaves.

On sunday I opted to check out Monduli Mtn forest.  What was a dusty ride a month ago is now hard packed damp roads and green everywhere.   Higher up in this picture it was actually a bit drier and some dust on the roads due to cattle traffic.