Saturday, April 16, 2011

The S.S. TDA

I've spent hours now, sitting on my bicycle, watching the unchanging scenery go by and have asked myself, with not any sort of agreeable answer, what on earth to write about next.  

We're on a 12,000 km bicycle trip, and around now, we might finally be feeling that.  If  the average commuter rides 5km's to and from work in the morning, and they were to make this commute everyday of the year, perhaps the odd day off with the occasional longer weekend ride added in, it would take them approximately 6 and a half years to ride this.   For us, we'll make that in 94 cycling days.  Right.

We get up, we make breakfast, break camp, organize the vehicles, make a plan, pack the trucks, set the sails and send the SS TDA off on another 100+km's down the road.  Each staff with a entirely separate yet intricately coordinated mission for the day, sets off on our dozen or so tasks, and at the end of the day, it all gets done, we're all back together, and all are laughing about it all once again.  Every morning we wake, at least an hour before day break,  and we are ON.  Myself as Assistant Tour Director have become particularly prone to the social experiment of it all; the peoples people.   Before the sun has even risen, I am the approachable problem solver to no particular category of "problems".  My job, in that instant has come to be more of a problem sorter rather than a problem solver. There are two types of problems you see, there is my problem, and there is your problem.

For the riders, they wake, they eat, they bike, they eat, they bike, they eat, they sleep, they wake, they bike, they eat, they bike, they eat, they sleep, they wake, they bike and bike and bike and bike, and by now, might just be topped up on the urge to go for a bike ride.

We've hit the flats.  Straight flat roads.  Our cycling days now are mostly over 150km's every day.  The day's grow long, we are a well tunned machine, and, if you can believe it, not much is new anymore.
Is this to say that we're not having fun?  No.  This is just to say that the social experiment has begun.  What on earth do we do, stuck on a boat with 100 or so far from strangers now, with not too many resources at our fingertips.  We make our own fun.

Finishing our last stint of two glorious rest days here in Livingstone at Victoria Falls, with Cape Town on the horizon for the first time our tour, there is certainly a tour wide feeling, that each day is a precious last chance at something unexpected.   Nothing about what we are doing will ever be the same as it is now, from the places we are, to the people we are with, and everything in between.

Tomorrow, we have 12 new riders joining us, the largest number of new sectionals at once, the greatest number of people on tour now, a border to cross (always an adventure), and the Elephant Highway begins!  Stay tuned for updates on large mammal sightings and my 10 Stage rival rider competition known as the Bo-Bo-Bo-Bonanza with a dozen or so teams participating in 10 riding days of nut-bar challenges and antics.

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