First Tanzanian Professional Cyclist?

This just came in on the Arusha Cyclist mailing list:
(If you can't understand don't worry)

On Thu, Feb 28, 2013 at 3:40 PM, Richard Laizer <laizer.richard@yahoo.com> wrote:

Hii  All.

How is everyone doing?we like to let's you know we will go to the last two bigs races in S.A.

This weekend on Sunday is S A championship Nelspruit  155klm.And i will ride with MTN team.for sure i will miss Hamisi becouse UCI team is not goinng to the race.they will be waiting for us to come back on Sunday just after finish the race will driving back to Potch 865klm. And on Monday will be together drive  to Cape Town  and the second day will be in Cape Tonw Tuesday.For tour of 5 days.So i will leave tomorrow  morning and back on Sunday.

Cheers.

What this means is Richard Laizer is riding on the MTN- Qhubeka team.   "Team MTN-Qhubeka, which is registered in South Africa, has become the first African team to join the second division of world cycling; the highest level from any team on the continent after the International Cycling Union (UCI) confirmed its status as a Professional Continental team for 2013."


And from April 2006 the young kid in the middle is Richard when he was about 15 riding with the big boys.

Our club is much bigger and faster than 2006.  On our Wednesday club rides there are more like 30+ riders .  We ride moderate for 15km, then we do intervals of different types for 30 km, then ride 15km at 40-45kph.  That last part is me just barely hanging on the back, and two days ago they dropped me the last 3 km.  Technically I should not be riding that hard at the end, but i think my 85% is their 70%.

Best part of the commute

The first an last part of my commute is through some land of ours that has no development .  Just small trees and grass.

This is such a perfect way to start and end my ride.  Especially coming home, it is late and the roads are chaotic, dusty, and stressful and then i go through this old pasture . 

I am sorry I ride a bike on roads

 

I was raised on guilt.  I was taught to have guilt without sex, to feel guilty if I was not feeling guilty, and that guilt is what norwegian-american lutherans are good at.

But don't get me wrong, I realize that I had a great childhood despite not realizing it at  the time.

Anyway with that in mind I would like to apologize on behalf of all the bicycle commuters who get in the way of vehicles as drivers travel around.  I get the impression we mess up their/your driving experience.  I am trully sorry for that.

Live with it.

Hot season is here

In a normal December the hot season has started in Arusha.  This year it delayed until  this weekend as we have rains, keeping us cool.  On the commute today, I had to really slow up to keep from sweating.  It has been a great December and January in terms of temperature.


Do car drivers ever walk?  and when they do they defer to vehicles when crossing a road?  Today a guy is stopped at the gate into AICC parking lot being checked,  so I start to cross in front of him, but have to back track as he pushes past me.  No indication that I was alive.  Motorizied vehicles are  king.

Raleigh touring bike update

 I have finally finished the setup of this bike 70's Raleigh commuter bike.  On Sunday the changes I made, well , made my day!

I installed in the past year:
fenders
racks
dynamo
wiring
voltage regulator
700cc front rim
brooks saddle
modern brake pads
smaller chain ring
besides redoing all bearings.

However the rear wheel was still the odd 28inch rim, worn 5 speed cassette, worn chain.  the chain was so cheap it really wore out with all the soil off the road.  I have some skipping i was just living with until i could change rear wheel and chain.  I found a 700 wheel with 6 speed shimano cassette but the axle was solid and bad cones.

 It got worse and worse, and i lived with it, then Friday my tyre wore through, and a spoke broke and i limped home.

Sunday noon i started.  I had a too long axle, and as the rear wheel is dished it took me awhile to figure the right length, where to put the cone.  I almost called someone in but by 4pm it was coming together.  Then i took an old mtn derailleur, modified some pulleys.  I found a 7 speed chain , re dished the wheel, trued the wheel, moved the axle back and forth and tested about 5pm.  NO skipping!  shifting was never better.  made some final adjustments and went for an hour test ride at 6pm.  What a difference.

Again on the commute today I enjoyed riding a good machine.  One final adjustment and everything worked. 

However not sure where I am going to be getting the cassette when i need one.

New trail

A couple of weeks ago I posted about trying to climb Mnt Meru and coming down a nice trail along a deep ravine.

I was hankering for a long slow ride but Thomas and Dave were having none of it.  The showed up around 0730 and we went up the mountain and i suggested we try to ride up this new trail.

We could only ride about half of the 2 km new  track.  It was not only steep but slippery as grease.

However it was well worth , old forest, colobus monkeys, birds galore .  After leaving the road we didn't meet anyone on this track until we popped out on a forest road about 2200.  I was talking about what we do if we meet a forest guard and then a Meru Forest vehicle comes up to us.  He just says hello, have a good time.  Maybe he was an accountant.

We stayed on the forest road and had long descent to the ring road, then single track to ngaremtoni.  Great ride.

Bike Fuel

My buddy Sekiji having lunch somewhere in East Africa.  Once for lunch I saw him eat a big amount but this pushes the limit.  I had a fun lunch with him, two more world cyclists and myself.  Photo by permission. 

Meru Hike

this was to be a day climb of Mnt Meru. It is complicated. We had a permit for the forest part but it was forgotten in the 4am departure from Mike's house. So the vehicle that dropped us off was stopped and held. We thought it was held by the national parks instead of the forest. So we had to turn around. In the end we walked down while the permit was being driven up to the car. found a new trail for the bicycle along a deep canyon. So i can post this walk in a bike blog.

Too good to turn around

Just about here was my planned turn around place.  It was so great I went " a bit " further.

Sekiji, our bike touring visitor, has another week to kill and he was invited to visit our friends in Ketumbeine.  He planned on leaving Sunday and I planned on riding with him a couple of hours.  

(Edit note:  Originally I had said MY visitor, but at this stage he is OUR visitor.  He has cooked many meals for us.  )

He had a funny noise in the front hub so first we took that apart and found the bearings on one side bad. there was lots of iron filings.  This is what his bearings looked like.  the second from left really shows the pitting.

We started about 10 am riding west  then up and over Monduli Juu plateau.  I carried his rear panniers and we made good time .

  We had lunch in Monduli, another soda in Monduli Juu.  Originally I was thinking of returning about here but riding was great so i opted to go a bit further.  The top came quickly 1930meters elevation so I rode a bit more.  I pointed out ketumbeine and other mountains.  I rode to the edge of the plateau and that was very fun, so I committed at 3pm to make the circle around Monduli mtn.  We parted ways when it looked like this, dry.

We went down seven corners switchback and at the bottom I gave him his saddle bags.  He was hoping to make ketumbeine that night .  I was sceptical.

(the next morning i found out he came up 20 km short and ran out of water in the morning)

It was bone dry and dusty in this area.  I coasted to the village of Mfereji, crossed two very dusty canyons and started up the cattle track to climb the escarpment.  this is hard to carry and walk a bike down.  To go up was just shy of hell.  I started by pushing, then three times i had to carry on my back.  I could do that for about 5 minutes before i had to put the bike down and rest.  I started doubting making it home by dark.  I think it must of been about 30-45 minutes to the top.  I leaned the bike against a tree and drank water.  I fest nauseated and tired.  I forced myself to eat some dates, despite not feeling like eating.  I drank more water while watching a herd of grant gazelle on the open plains.  It is an open plain all the way to the sealed highway 20 km away.  It was 530pm.

I started riding into a headwind, and the dates kicked in and i felt fine.  I picked up speed and made good time on the flat open plain.  the trail was mostly hard.  thirty minutes or so and I started climbing for another 3o minutes and then I was at the top and contoured over to the road.  640pm.  No way i could make it by dark and no lights.

I called mother but she didn't answer.  I began the fast descent of 20km to arusha and she called back and agreed to meet.  I rode fast and just before Ngaremtoni i got a flat on the rear tyre and it got dark.  I t was a good time to move across the road and wait ten minutes for Bernice.

Hmm, except for the steep rocky trail up the escarpment a much better way to circle the mountain.  But then you miss the coast down the wide open plains with a tail wind.  Better time than last time and i carried a load 1/2 way.

All these picture above and below courtesy of Sekiji.

 The Friberg family he went to visit.

Hosting

What goes around comes around.  I want to introduce my new friend Sekiji

The Monday after I graduated from college in May 1977 my roommate Dan Miller and I were dropped off on the highway by friends with our big rucksacks and we hitch hiked for 2 months around the USA and me ending in Montreal to fly to stay with may parents in Tanzania.

One of the good experiences was when we were invited "home" and we accepted.
I was amazed and enjoyed most of those experiences.

I have had family and friends come and visit, but about 15 years ago I started "picking up"  long range bicyclists as they rode around the world and inviting them home.  First this started with meeting by chance on the road, then by the website warm showers, and some by word of mouth.  Only one visit was outright negative (a couple that said they were bike touring but were actually hitching and could only talk about themselves and their own beliefs).  Another one was too long and he was sick.

Sekiji is the latest, he emailed a week before he thought he would arrive, then we SMS back and forth.  By the time he came I had checked his website and maybe he had checked me out.  He came on Tuesday evening and has left Friday for four days around Kilimanjaro and then he will come back for a night or two.

I enjoyed watching his movies of his trip.  He learnt Spanish and his Spanish is better than his English.

http://www.sekiji.net/