Finally

Life ganged up on my adventurous bike rides for awhile.  Sunday I didn't so much plan it but it turned into a long one with lots of new stuff.

I woke up early enough but was 45 minutes late getting off to meet John and Amanda (white biker chick) at their house in Usa River.  I should of known it was going to be a good day as despite being on the busiest highway around it was a gas of a ride.  I held off a couple of guys who thought they could hold onto my slip stream.

I left home with thermos of tea (good idea), litre of juice in tetra pack (bad idea), 2 water bottles, a p&b sandwich, apple , and some dates.  Was not sure if i would be riding 2 or 4 hours with them.

We rode single track easterly parallelling the main highway through the Usa River water catchment forest.  It was great.  Then across the momella road and past St Jude Secondary and on trails and roads .  Most was flat with a few stream canyons to negotiate and one 1/2 kilometre of completely washed out path.

Then we popped out on the highway at Kikatiti.  I figured this side would not be enjoyable but once we passed the high tension wires we were on paths and roads and flying along.

I got hungry and we stopped and drank my tea.  The juice packed was punctured and i had juice all over.

These roads were all over, must be remnants of the old sisal plantation roads

.We had lots of fans.  Many helpful people and some GPS keeping us in right direction.

Amanda is the most fit woman rider I have ever ridden with.  I can't keep up.

We needed to cross the Usa River and somehow found this irrigation weir.  I was a bit unnerving .

John's GPS was giving conflicting info about distances and we found the big road to Mererani, but quickly decided it had too much traffic and dust.  Were told this road would take us to Manyire and i convinced them we should do a wine tasting at Erik Mdogos.  More fast roads, all flat.  Then we came to a big village and were told Manyire is "One way" up this road.  Now we were climbing slightly on a scrubby ridge with mostly Waarusha people.  I turned out this road went right past Erik's , but i didn't recognise until we were past.  It was about 1300 and we toured and had a few sips.  John and Amanda rode off and i hung for another few minutes as our directions changed.  I have about 30 km to home.

Instead I stopped and chatted with the Redding family.   Bertha Redding was a school teacher trained in colonial times who married a British District officer , and they settled in Arusha.  She was headmistress for many years at the famous Arusha School.  They had three boys and one lives on the farm with her.  John Redding died about 10 years ago.   I left at 4pm and was home 545pm.  It had turned into a long day, and two stops.  I probably rode 100km.