Windy in Windhoek

The trip is winding down fast.  We will be in Cape Town in about two weeks.  We had five consecutive 100+ milers from Maun to Windhoek, including a 207km ride, strong head wind, rain, hail, and a long climb.

Stage 76 - Maun was a small tourist city in Botswana.  I took a flight over the Okavango delta, the largest in land delta, on the rest day.  The flight was the last one of the day, so we were lucky to see the sunset from the air. Today's ride was fast, assisted by a strong tailwind.  Most people made it to lunch (80kms) in under three hours.  The road continued to be long, flat and straight.

Stage 77 - This was a team trial day.  We formed the teams by country.  To represent America, Team Oil consisted of Scott, Kevin, Mike and I.  Scott is a strong racer, while Kevin and Mike are consistantly fast.  It's a 40km time trail.  We warmed up from 38kmph.  At the end we were pulling 50kmph on a flat with a slight incline road.   It was a total team effort, everyone took turns to pull.  We finished with 1 hour 1 minute, tied with Canadian Bacon (which consisted of both men and women's race leader).  The Dutch team, BeOne, won the trail with 57 minutes!

We saw an Ostritch laid an egg next to Steve's tent at the camp site.  How auspicious on Easter Sunday?  The egg was promptly transformed to an omelette.

Stage 78 - Mando days are usually the toughest days.  This was extra tough - 207 kms (125 miles).  I think most people had never cycled that distance before.  This is the end of the raining season, but for some reason, rain still persists.  The morning started with heavy fog, then a thunderstom that produced hail.  It was not fun at all.  Then, a loud pop came from my rear wheel.  I checked the tire, it was still fully inflated.  I started to ride again and noticed a severe wobble on the rear wheel.  One of the spokes had snapped off.  I took off the broken spoke and carried on.  After lunch, another storm hit us with strong head wind.   Some people didn't want to leave lunch, so I decided to ride alone.  It was a tough grinding day.  Once I reached camp, the news came that Sarge, from Trinidad, could not get a Namibian visa at the border.  So he lost his EFI status.  Alice from Scotland also forgot to take a right turn today, so she went straight towards South Africa.  We finally found her later in the day.

Stage 79 - This turned out to be a very tough day.  I changed my tires last night to a bigger size for the up coming off road.  My plan is to ride these tires all the way to Cape Town.  The morning ride was a bit slow after the long day yesterday.  A very strong head wind was with us all day.  We also had a little climbing as well.  After a Coke stop, rain started to drop as I rode out of town.  Daniel and Mike turned back towards town.  I just kept on going.  The rain was very heavy with a very strong headwind as I climbed a hill.  Then, the rain stopped on the down hill and the wind became a tail wind.  The descend was very fast at 60 kmph.  All of sudden a strong gust of wind blew me almost to the next lane and hail pelted down.  The storm was so heavy, I couldn't see anything in front and golf ball sized hail came down hard.  I got off the bike and turned my back to the direction of the storm.  After a few minutes, the storm lightened up and I kept on.  It was so cold, the temperature dropped to 60 degrees from 80+ during the storm.  The sun finally came out!  It was a memorable ride.

Stage 80 - A lot of climbing and strong headwind to Windhoek.  It seems a lot of the capital cities in Africa are over a mile above sea level.  Windhoek is no exception, at 1700+ meters.  After arriving at the camp site, I promptly devoured a big T-bone and three beers.  We had some really fun sectional riders in the lase section and today was their last ride, to celebrate their achievement, a big group of us went to Joe's beer garden.  The zebra steak I ordered was excellent.  Others tried other game meats like Springbok, Kudu, etc.