Great African Divide Ride Day 4: Thursday 29th September

Distance: 32 kms

Altitude gain: 120 meters

Altitude loss: 110 metres

Difficulty: An easy ride cut short by ravenous thorns

Temp: 34 Celcius

Max heart rate: 128

Average ride speed: 18.2 kph

On every OLT ride, there has been one day that stands out loud and clear as the “worst day.” On the Skeleton Coast ride, it was the day George Fletcher fell off his bike and broke the top of his femur. On the Kili ride, it was the day we did almost two thousand meters of climb in the Southern Highlands of Tanzania to a wet, windy campsite, following several vehicle punctures, one of the support vehicles getting very lost … and when MY supper was eaten by Alan and Ryan (they say they thought an extra plate had mistakenly been served … yeah, yeah, yeah). I went to bed with just an unbuttered sandwich of peanut butter. Anyway, let’s forget the history and focus on the now.

I am so hoping that Thursday 29th, will be the worst day of the Great African Divide Ride. Let me explain how it unfolded.

Leaving the Nata Bird Sanctuary campsite, all was well. Mostly, anyway. I decided that I would stay back in the camp and finish writing up the blog, and catch up with Paul, Patrick, and Chris at the first stop, 30kms down to the road. The night before, Patrick had mended a puncture, but as he mounted his bike there at the Bird Sanctuary, he announced the tyre was a bit flat. It wasn’t really flat, just a bit soft. We decided it was a slow puncture, and pumping it up every hour or so would suffice. Off the three riders went, and I sat down to finish the blog whilst Diana tidied up the camp.

The pumping up of Patrick’s tyre almost, I repeat almost, worked. He managed to ride all of the 29.95kms to the 30kms breakfast stop. But with just 50 metres to go, he had to dismount because of a very flat tyre. Whilst the rest of us tucked into our muesli, yogurt, peanut butter sandwiches, or whatever, Patrick was fussing with his deflated tyre. “Ah, Patrick”, I said, let’s just put a new a tyre and tube on. Thirty minutes of extensive searching later, we came to the very sad conclusion that the box with spare tyres and tubes must still be in the lounge of my flat in Harare. It’s at moments like this that we see the less pleasant sides of our personalities. I absolutely knew it was Patrick’s fault that the box was left behind – I was in charge of packing, I accept that, but as we were doing the last-minute packing at Sherwood Flat, Patrick was fussing about the route between Pandamatenga and Who knows, and kept interrupting me to ask questions. I clearly remember telling him to stop fussing about Komoot and his cell phone and help me carry the last of the boxes. Patrick, on the other hand, clearly recalls asking me, as we tied up the last of the kit onto the back of the Isuzu, if there were any more boxes in the flat, and apparently, I said there weren’t. Diana asked if she should go and check, and apparently, I said, quite strongly, “No, we are already 2 hours late – get in the car and let’s go”. Paul and Chris stood around, feeling a little bit awkward at this minor spate between me, Patrick, and Diana.

Anyway, this is a long way of saying we were now in the middle of Nowhere (which is 30kms from Nata), with a very flat and thorn-ridden tyre, and no spares. Any reasonable and clear-thinking person will realise that the fault was clearly Patrick’s for interrupting my thinking when I was packing, that Diana was largely responsible for not going back upstairs to check for any more kit, and that Paul and Chris were a complete waste of rations, just standing around the Isuzu and not going upstairs to check. How is it possible that I could be blamed as the individual responsible for ensuring that all the kit was packed. Ummmm. Mea culpa, and it hurts.

So, we decided to upload the bikes and drive to Francistown to buy spare tubes and tyres. Botswana has many many positive attributes – but the aggressiveness of the thorns should not be underestimated.

Francistown owes its existence to ancient gold mine workings. In 1866, Henry Hartley (famous for finding many of the gold mines in our region) sent a report to the German geologist Karl Mauch about these workings. Subsequent reports by Mauch stimulated the first gold rush in Southern African … and the rest is history.

We got to Francistown shortly after midday and started hunting for a bike shop. The only listing that Mr. Google gave us was for “Lightning Bikes,” but eventually, this turned out to be no more than a stand under an umbrella on Blue Jacket Street, and the man who normally sold bike spares under the umbrella had gone to lunch. Patrick and Diana went in search of other possible places to buy tyre and tube, and they were partially successful – two tyres purchased. We also realised we would need more Pula cash so Diana was dispatched to find an ATM and draw a few hundred dollars worth of Pula. Patrick went to find someone who could sell him a SIM card. The one he got in Kasane was not working.

Usually, getting money out of an ATM is quick and easy … but this was Thursday, 29th September, and on the next day, it was Independence Day – the start of a long weekend. The queues at the ATMs were long, some with over 50 people queuing. Diana was told that the Absa queues were the shortest and found one. She texted us to say she wouldn’t be too long as there were only 8 people in front of her. But 45 minutes later, she was not back in the car, so I called to find out what the delay was. She responded in a fraught and frantic voice, “The ATM has swallowed your card. I’m on my way to the nearest branch to see how to get it back.” This is not the time and place to go through all the steps that then unfolded, starting with the first ABSA branch telling us that we should come back on Monday!!!. In the end, we did get the card back – at 5:30pm. Thanks to a very pleasant lady at the ABSA main branch and a G4S security guy. We spent the night at Woodlands Campsite, with just a few hundred Pula in hand but nice hot showers.

It seemed to me we had completely wasted a day. I felt pretty low. But then I thought about what OLT has achieved and how much very real suffering has been alleviated by the generous donations raised through OLT. The following are two examples. And as I type these notes, I realise yet again how lucky I am to be able-bodied and to be enjoying these amazing experiences and at the same time to appreciate that we are in the OLT fold – which is not just the riders but all the donors – are doing an awfully good job of helping make life worth living for those we can support.