Monday, May 23, 2005 - 06:07 PM

David Houghton has finally made it, to Cape Town, sore butt and all...

Cape Town

Forty kilometres from Cape Town, I could see Table Mountain looming over the city. I've never seen Table Mountain before, but it overwhelmingly felt like I was coming home. After 121 days and nearly 12,000 kilometres, I was finally home.

I felt, and I'm sure every rider felt, a rush of emotions. Joy, fatigue, relief, sadness. As difficult as the trip has been, it's also been difficult to see it end.


The Bitter End

I naively thought the last couple of weeks would be easy. Wrong, wrong, wrong. The ride from Keetmanshoop to Fish River Canyon was one of the toughest days of the entire trip. The headwind was so malevolent that nine riders got off their bikes and onto the truck. In the past few days, when we haven't had a headwind, we've had hills. When the hills have flattened out, we've had rain. There seems to be no end to the challenges that are thrown our way.

It's been a difficult ride, right to the very last day. And the last day was difficult because . . . well, to be honest, we were pretty hung over from our celebrations the night before. Masochists.


Wednesday, May 18, 2005
One Final Ride

When I finished the Tour d’Afrique in Cape Town, I had cycled 11,915 kilometres. 85 kilometres shy of the 12,000 mark. So yesterday I got my sore butt on the bike one more time and rode to the Cape of Good Hope, the most southwesterly point on the African continent.

When Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias discovered the cape in 1488, he named it the Cape of Storms. And that name seems much more appropriate than the Cape of Good Hope: it rained intermittently all day and the northwesterly wind was ferocious. It gusted at 95 kilometres and hour and threatened to knock me off my bike. Soon after I’d reached the Cape, coastal roads were closed due to the severity of the wind. But no matter. I was finally able to sit at the tip of the peninsula and watch the waves spray huge white plumes against the rocks.

Twelve thousand kilometres. It usually takes me several years to ride that kind of distance, and I did it in four months. A third of a year to travel more than a quarter of the way around the earth. I think I’ll put my feet up for a while.


Monday, May 16, 2005
Njama Safari

Now that our trip is over, I'd like to thank everyone who dropped by the blog to check up on our progress. Knowing you were still attached, even by that invisible thread, meant a lot.

I'll be spending the next month in England and Wales working on a book about the Tour d'Afrique. If you'd like to contact me with praise, criticism, ruminations or accusations, just send an email to:

davidonabike@hotmail.com

Of course, I won't literally be on a bike. I have no desire to so much as look at a bike for the next six months.

All the best, David



The Facts

One rider died. Three riders quit the Tour. Two broke their collarbones, one broke his hip. Two riders were hit by trucks. Riders received a total of 39 stitches, suffered 9 infections and 2 burns.

Personally, I had 33 punctures. I replaced 2 chains, 3 seat bolts, 1 set of brake pads, 2 gear cables, 1 derailleur cable, 1 rear rim, 1 rear tire and 1 derailleur hanger. I broke or wore out a pump mount, a mini-pump, a spoke, a jersey, a pair of gloves, a seat and a tool bag. I lost 2 water bottles, 1 pair of gloves and 1 computer. I took over four thousand photos and wrote over fifty thousand words in my journal. I had diarrhea for 33 consecutive days.

On the plus side, we managed to climb a total of nearly 44,000 meters of altitude. That's equal to nearly five trips to the top of Everest. We saw more wildlife than we'd imagined, we were exposed to more diverse cultures than we could have dreamt. It's fair to say every rider pushed themselves harder than they thought possible. We have suffered and we have grown.

I underestimated the difficulty of the trip. But I even more vastly underestimated the exhilaration that comes with an adventure of this magnitude.