Ha ha! You missed!

Addis Ababa (New Flower), is the third highest capital in the world.  We rode into the city in convoy yesterday and was greeted with cheers and applauds.  The local riders explained that Ethiopians likes running and cycling, so people appreciate what we are doing.  No wonder Ethiopians dominate marathons and long distance running, the terrain and elevation is perfect for training.  One thing I did notice is that most Ethiopians in the rural villages walk barefoot.  There are a lot of agriculture activities in this country.  98% of the forest are gone.  During our ride, I only saw one or two factories near Addis.  There were many foreign aid projects, mainly from USAid, China, Japan, Italy, Korea, Canada, and Lebanon.

I have tried different strategies to deal with the kids.  Engagement seemed to work.  Nearly all adults, most teenagers, and very young kids are very nice.  It's the 5~10 year old that are naughty.  A kid tried to jam a stick into my wheels.  Most of the time, you can see a kid pick up a rock a mile away.  If I see a group of suspicious kids, I slow down and point at them.  Generally that will do the trick.  A few days ago, I saw a kid with an Obama t-shirt and wanted to take a picture.  So I slowed down next to him, as soon as I stopped, he took off running.  

Bahir Dar was a nice little town by Lake Tana.  Everything was within walking distance.  The juice bars were fantastic.  You can get avocado, mango, papaya, pineapple, guava, and mixed juices.  I tried them all!  For dinner on both nights, I went to a chic local restaurant, located on a second floor open terrace at the main street round-about.  It's all young local people in this restaurant, very well dressed.  It was interesting to see a table of four or five women sitting together drinking beer, having a good time.  

During the break, we visited a monastery on an island in Lake Tana.  It was built in the 14th century and paintings were done in the 16th century.  Because there were no written language back then, they painted the stories on the cloth and plastered it to the wall.  People in the painting with both eyes showing were the "believers."  And people with only one eye showing were the "non-believers."  The monastery was a large circular building made of wood and mud.  It had a thatched roof as well.  To enter the monastery, we had to remove our shoes and hat.  The monastery was divided into three sections.  The first section and second section were for congregation and the priests and the inner most section can only be accessed by a monk.  The difference between a priest and a monk is that a priest can get married, but a monk can't.  Our second visit was to Blue Nile falls, and it was gorgeous.  It could have been much more grand, if they didn't build a dam around it.  The older pictures showed the fall was much wider.  

I also realized that we were at more than a mile above sea level, higher than Denver, Colorado, the "Mile High" city.  Our highest climb was to 3200 meters, about 2 miles above sea level.  This section was a great work out!

Stage 26 - This was a mando day, which meant a tough riding day.  100+ miles total, with rolling hills in the morning, then a 30 mile climb, then a huge down hill.  I felt strong today, after the recent breaks.  We navigated out of the pulluted city of Bahir Dar into the villages in the morning.  Once we were out, I could smell some very fragrant trees, like Jasmine.  After lunch I rode with Terry, from Australia.  He and I stopped at someone's house for tea.  It was so lovely to go to someone's house.  Then we saw a monastery on the road and decided to go in.  Within minutes of walking in, the priest and the monk showed up.  We shook hands but didn't really understand each other.  They offered us beer to drink, but we didn't accept.  A teen aged kid was also in the crowd and he spoke some English.  He translated for us a little bit.  He was in his late teens, and was in the 8th grade.  He should be in the 11th, but because his father went to fight in a war, he was delayed in school for three years.  Along the road, I saw a few rusted tank shells laid by the road side.  This country was in a civil war as well as a war with Eritrea.

We do get meet interesting people all day.  Most of the older adults are very nice.  One even said "I appreciate what you do" as I cycled by.  Some of the kids are nice too.  Overall, the kids threw rocks was about 10% of our encounters, 40% were the annoying "you you you, where you go, and give me money" kids.  Rest are genuinely nice people.  A lot of people gave us thumbs ups and gestured to us to peddle hard.  It's strange that we focus a lot on the negative stuff, but ignore all the positive around us.  Tomorrow, I'm going to tune out the noise, focus on the positive and to get the motivation going again.  When a kid threw a rock at Scott and missed, he said "Ha ha! You missed!"  

Ram, a Sri Lankan from Canada ran into a cow today.  He and the cow were both fine.  His front wheel rim was bent from the impact.  What happens when a Hindu hits a cow?

Stage 27 - This might as well be a mando day.  We had a 30km down hill to start the morning, but then 90km of mostly up hills, with total 2000 meters of climb.  I learned an interesting fact today: there are about 1 billion people total living in Africa.  So there are more Indians (and Chinese) than Africans on earth.  But the land size of Africa is much more than Russia, US, China, Europe, and more combined.  

It was an interesting day as we went past a village that sold home made liquors on the street.  The liquor was made from sorghum.   I stopped to check one out.  It was strong stuff.  The guy said his mother made them.  Terry, Rodney and I had tea at some one's house again.  This time, we got offered warm bread.  It was lovely.  We past several villages that was very friendly.  People actually said "welcome."   We also had two riders got hit in the head, one by a rock and another by cow manure.  Suresh, a Trinidadian was asked by some kids "why are you black?" At the one of the last Coke Stops, I had a ice cold beer (by Ethiopian standards).  Most soft drinks here are either hot or semi-cool.  Pepsi and Coke are so dominate here.  It seemed one side of the street was all Pepsi and the other side all Coke.

We camped in a forest at 2500 meters above sea level.  Tomorrow we will ride the Blue Nile Gorge.  20km of steep down hill and then 20km of steep up hill, average 9% grade.  The record for the climb is 1h14m. 

Stage 28 - It was an very auspicious start to the ride this morning when a Ethiopian boy shouted to me as I left the camp "You, good luck!"  Last night, we had grilled chicken for dinner.  This morning, we had scrambled eggs.  They also handed out energy bars this morning as well.  These were the signs for a tough tough day to come.  This is the Blue Nile Gorge stage, this section is named after this ride.  The morning ride was a bit tough, I was slow to warm up.  Once we hit lunch, I got more energized.  Immediately after lunch, we headed down the gorge from 2300 meters above sea level to 1000m.  It was a 20km descend on terrible, yet steep paved the road.  The road had many bumps, some sections of the pavement had a 5ft drop.  I went no faster than 35~40kmph, with my hands on the breaks all the time.  From this side of the gorge, all the riders could clearly see the climb on the other side.  It looked like a wall with a strip of road painted on it.  It looked very daunting.  Once I reached the bottom, the scenery reminded me of the grand canyons.  A new bridge built by the Japanese in 2008 spun across the Blue Nile river hundred of meters below.   

This was a time trail day for the racers.  They timed us for the climb from bottom to the top.  It was 1400 meter climb, going up 20kms non-stop.  I just dropped to the lowest gear on my bike and spun.  More than two hours later, I was at the top.  The view was spectacular on the way up.  We rode on clif side of the mountain a couple of times, most people would get vertigo if they looked down from it.  It was about 95F degrees at the bottom of the gorge, one we reached the top, it was a pleasant 82F degrees.  The camp was located at the top.  I had a nice ice cold shower.  It was the most pleasant and refreshing feeling in the world.  A celebratory beer capped this wonderful day.  After dinner, some of us went to the cliff to see sun set over the gorge.  Looking back at the twisty climb below, there was immense sense of accomplishment.

Stage 29 - Today, we rode to the highest point on this trip, 3200 meters (2 miles) above sea level.  The ride to lunch was hard on the legs after yesterday's climb.  Just about 200 meters before lunch, there were a couple of kids on the side of the road.  They shouted, "Money, money, give me my money." as I approached.  I shook my head and said "No money."  The kids then shouted "Pen, pen!"  I shook my head again and said "No pen." as I cycled past them.  Next thing I heard was "Fuck you!"  I couldn't stop laughing.  Other riders also shared similar experience with the same kids.  The descent into camp was nice and easy.  The camping site was simply majestic, on the edge of an canyon.   Looking in to the canyon, the view was spectacular.  We are in the village of Debre Libanos.  There was a Oriental Coptic monastery built here in 1401.  Ethiopian's religious roots can be traced to this region.  The monastery is about 3km from the camp, so a few of us rode our bike down to see it.  I don't know a lot of history about this place, but some one can Google it.

Stage 30 - We rode into Addis today.  Most of the ride was on rolling hills and one steep hill right before the convoy meeting place.  After all the hills climbs this week, it seemed easy to climb that "last" hill.  Some one said that we climbed net 8000 meters in the five days.  That was amazing.  From the convoy point to the city of Addis was all down hill.  Addis reminded me of Beijing 25 years ago.  There were some really nice high rises, but many run down one or two story buildings as well. The streets were crowded and dirty.

After setting up the tent, Peter, Dennis, Marelie, Mike and I went out to explore the surrounding area.  We went to a busy pizza restaurant.  It was filled with young couples and professionals.  Marelie and I tried the Peanut Tea.  Yes, Peanut Tea!  It's very thick but liquid, almost like diluted peanut butter.  It was very nice though.  The pizzas was fantastic as well, hot and fresh from the oven.  $2USD for a large pizza! The Italians tried to colonize Ethiopia, but they left their hallmark here: great coffee and pizza.  After dinner we went to this coffee shopped that looked similar to Starbucks.  Ice Cream and cake!!!  Ahh, it was well deserved.  I'm sure all that sugar from today will be burned off in no time.   Also, I saw a guy wearing a Carolina sweatshirt  Hope this means good things for our basketball team!