Monday, January 17, 2005 - 01:56 PM

David is now in Africa and readies his bike for the journey...

Thursday, January 13, 2005

The group assembles :

Yesterday, I met Bart, a participant from Belgium, as well as Colin (the Race Director) and Randy (the Tour Director). Colin rode the TDA two years ago and Randy rode it last year. We had a drink and talked about what to expect of the Tour. They told Bart and I about their experiences in years past: the roads, the motorists, the bikes, the riders, the challenges. More participants arrived throughout the day. There will be 32 riders in all, or perhaps 36, depending on who you ask. There will also be a number of sectional riders, who will be with us for segments of the trip.

Now that I’ve been here for nearly a week and the bike is ready, I’m feeling itchy. It’s time to begin.


Deflated:

I’ve already set a Tour d’Afrique record. For having the first flat tire. In fact, the flat tire occurred in my hotel room three days prior to actually riding the bike. I pumped up the tires, put the various pieces of the bike together and by the time I had installed the seat, the front tire was completely flat. I pulled the tube out, found a small puncture and repaired it.

If I ever find myself at the Cheng Shin Tube Company in Taiwan, I’m going to give those Quality Control guys a piece of my mind.



Tuesday, January 11, 2005
Mystery:

The Sphinx was commissioned by Khafre, the 4th Dynasty Egyptian king, who lived from 2558 to 2532 BC.

The Sphinx now directly faces a KFC.




Souq Al-Gamaal:

I set off at 7:30 AM with Ali, my taxi driver. He was full of fascinating and unexpected information: he told me that raw camel liver cures cancer; that the Israelis are adding chemicals to the crops to make Egyptians sick (“Jews are a lying people” he added); that there is a small mango that works better than Viagra (“give you strong machine”, to quote him directly).

After asking for directions a time or two, we finally arrived at the Birqash camel market, Souq al-Gamaal. As we walked in, Ali told me that God had given camels the impression that people are bigger than they are, otherwise they would kill us. Good thing. Inside the huge walled souq were three thousand camels. Hundreds of traders were shouting in Arabic. The slap of wooden sticks against the camels was everywhere and the camels’ ornery response, a sound between that of a donkey and a lion. Camels were running every which way, thicker than Cairo traffic.

As I was taking pictures, Hassan, one of the camel-boys, pointed out the distinctions between Somalian, Sudanese and Egyptian camels. Another trader asked if I was from America, and I set him straight. “Bush bad” he said, and spat on the ground defiantly. “Old Bush bad, young Bush bad.” Ali and I sat eating peanuts in the sun, speaking with a Sudanese camel trader. Ali explained that I would be riding my agala through Sudan and onward all the way to Cape Town. “I don’t understand” he replied to Ali in Arabic. “I don’t understand.”

Traders were securing their purchases. Camels, sold for 3000 to 7000 Egyptian pounds apiece, were being herded onto trucks. The camels clearly seemed to like the idea of staying at the souk. They strained at the ropes that tied them down in truck beds, braying and foaming at the mouth.

My shoes were covered in camel shit. It was the most wonderful smell.



Monday, January 10, 2005
Adaptation:

I brought five adapter plugs with me. The box told me they worked in Great Britain, Ireland, Hong Kong, Singapore, South America, China, New Zealand, the Caribbean, Asia, South Pacific Islands, the Philippines and parts of Africa. Well, I seem to have found out which part of Africa they don’t work in. The hotel has a strange system of three parallel holes which no adapter seems compatible with. So one of the first things I set out to do was to find an adapter so I could keep my laptop charged.

My guide and I searched a dozen electronics stores for an adapter. We came up with nothing. Returning to the hotel later that afternoon, I went to the front desk to demand a converter. The housekeeping staff appeared twenty minutes later. One of the men pushed my bike away from the wall where the porters had set it two days earlier. And there, praise Allah, was a two-pronged plug!

I plugged in my laptop, and when I saw the recharge light shine, I shook his hand vigorously. “You’re a genius!” I told him, something he probably hadn’t heard much in his room-cleaning career.



Afternoon in Cairo:

I've been seeing all the sights that every tourist is obligated to see. Memphis, the first capital of Egypt, founded in 3100 BC. Saqqara, site of the step pyramid of Zoser, built in 2650 BC. And the tomb of the unfortunately named Masturba of Ti. Wonder what he did in his spare time?

I've visited Cheops, Khafre, Menkaure and the Sphinx. Hebba, my guide, had an accent that made comprehension difficult. She’d been talking about reality for more than half an hour before I finally realized she was actually saying royalty. That put everything in a different light. She led me through the Egyptian Museum, talking about bodies being embalmed in ‘liquid raisins’. I thought that was a startlingly novel idea until I realized she was saying resins.

With all this sightseeing, I’ve taken 325 photos in two days, not counting the ones I deleted. On the way back to the hotel, we drove past the head office of the Egyptian Society of Engineers. It was crumbling. Some miles later, there was a young boy at the side of the road who appeared to be selling dung. In Cairo, anything's possible.



Morning in Cairo:

I awoke to the sound of Arabic echoing along the long tiled corridors. I walked down to the Ballroom for breakfast, a huge empty square, walls of dark wood hung with bright green batiks. No one ever talks about Egyptian cuisine, and it quickly became clear why. The baked beans were bland, the sausages were bland, the omelettes were bland. But then I discovered the bread table: a dozen different kinds of flatbreads, croissants, rolls, danishes and Baladi. Some dipped in chocolate, some dusted with icing sugar, some baked with cherry and raisin. I sampled a few, rationalizing it as carbo loading. All the while, the ubiquitous table of Japanese tourists snorting, hacking and spitting.

I anticipated hearing the muezzin, the call to prayer. What I didn’t expect was to hear it from five or six mosques simultaneously, the sound overlapping to create an effect that is hypnotic and hallucinatory. Five times a day, the voices begin again. The fact the voices are broadcast through loudspeakers gives them a Big Brother quality.

If Big Brother was muslim and had a pleasant singing voice, that is.


Toronto > London > Cairo:

I finished reading my first book over the wreck of the Titanic, off the coast of Newfoundland. By that time, I’d surveyed the in-flight entertainment, enjoyed a dinner of BA Roasted Chicken Tenders (Code #3507) and had the back of my seat kicked repeatedly by a six-year-old. We had a tailwind that averaged 200 kilometres an hour, getting us to the gate at Heathrow 45 minutes early.

One bag that I had intended to check had ended up as carry-on; an eagle-eyed security guard in London spotted something in the x-ray. Security made me take everything out of the bag, then confiscated my Swiss Army knife. I tried to explain that I hadn't intended on carrying it, which didn't make any sense to the guard. In all, it took an hour and a half to get through security. Things were getting a little hazy. It was 10:23 local time, but my body knew full well it was 5:23 in the morning and I hadn’t slept all night on the plane. My connecting flight to Cairo didn’t leave until 4:05 in the afternoon.

Hours later, BA flight 155 to Cairo flew over Luxembourg, Zurich, Venice, Dubrovnik and Athens as I watched Michael Palin’s Himalaya. As we arrived just before 11 PM, I finally got my first glimpse of Cairo. Hundreds of clusters of light, interrupted by a wide black swath. The Nile.

At the airport, I was met by Ihab, who got me through customs and into the van with Mothsin, our driver. We drove along Al-Uruba as cars weaved every which way. Mothsin asked where I was from, and I explained. He then asked where Canada was. “Is it in South Africa?” I guess he doesn't drive far beyond the city limits.



Sunday, January 02, 2005
Perspective:

It gives one pleasure to say, "I'm flying to Cairo." It gives one even greater pleasure to say, "I'm flying to Cairo and riding a bicycle all the way to Cape Town." But this feat, like any, is dwarfed by the feats of other explorers.

Like Goran Kropp, a Swedish climber who rode his bicycle 11,000 kilometres from Stockholm to Kathmandu, climbed Everest without bottled oxygen or sherpas, then descended and rode back to Stockholm. He carried all his equipment on his bike and was so concerned with travelling light that he had only one pair of underwear. (It's clear why he was travelling alone.) The round trip took a year; he fixed 132 flat tires en route and had to make three attempts before he could finally summit Everest. Near the peak, he passed the frozen corpses of Rob Hall and Scott Fischer, experienced guides who had been caught in a sudden storm that claimed 11 lives.

Whatever you do, there will always be someone who's gone farther, faster, lived closer to the edge. All you can do is make the trip your own. Experience it for all that it means to you. And bring plenty of clean underwear.


Thursday, December 30, 2004
Cairo digs:

Once I arrive in Cairo on January 5th, I'll be staying at the Cataract Hotel. Not the Cataract Resort or the Cataract Aswan (with so many Cataracts, it's a wonder anyone can see) but the Cataract Pyramids. It's described in the literature as 'relatively new'. Relative, of course, being a relative term, especially in Egypt. Was it built a year ago? A thousand years ago? Will there be hot-and-cold embalming fluid? I'm not quite sure what to expect.

Good friends Jenn and Matt have been on a whirlwind tour of the Mediterranean and will be arriving in Cairo at 1 AM on the 13th. In the morning, I'll rouse them from their jetlagged slumber and we'll go out for coffee to catch up on their travels through England, France, Spain, Tunisia, Libya, Morocco and elsewhere.