Rest Days - Addis Ababa

Two wonderful rest days, and they’ve about gone at this point. First order of priority after organizing laundry was the bike; attend to those squeaking disc brakes. Front pads were completely worn away, but the rear ok after some light sanding. Leaves me with one spare set of pads only; maybe it’ll get me through, maybe not. Then a general cleaning of the drive train especially, all of which nicely consumes the morning.

Relaxing lunch with Omar, Tim, Chelsea and Sarah of the TDA crew, then into the city to connect with Yordanos and Lidith from Sun Peak, who are holding onto a care package of cycling stuff from Canada (courtesy of Greg). Met up with Wonde as well from Africa Oil, and got the latest scooping that front. Really great to see these old friends and colleagues from previous project work in Ethiopia.

Sunday was very quiet, meeting with Alex (again, an old friend and colleague from previous project work here in Ethiopia). After some consideration, decided to leave hotel early and overnight in my tent at the golf club; trying to organize a taxi for 05:30 on a Sunday morning seems a bit ‘iffy’ to me. We’ll be departing Sunday at 06:45 in convoy to clear this city of >4 million, so I can’t be tardy.

The next week will be tough, I think. It will be our longest section yet, 8 days until the next rest day. The 3rd day of that will admittedly be a ‘bus’ day of 500 kilometres to get us through some especially ‘intolerant to cyclists’ areas; however, being in the back of a van all day long isn’t particularly restful. I’m also expecting fairly warm temperatures again, as we’ll be dropping ~1,000 m down into the Rift Valley.

We’ll be finding out firsthand the locust situation. Personally, I’ve yet to see any, although some riders reported seeing a swarm of them during the Gorge day. I was probably staring fixedly down at my handlebars at the time through dripping sweat, and missed that excitement.

On to Kenya next!

We’ll be finding out firsthand the locust situation. Personally, I’ve yet to see any, although some riders reported seeing a swarm of them during the Gorge day. I was probably staring fixedly down at my handlebars at the time through dripping sweat, and missed that excitement.

On to Kenya next!