Bike Tour

Site and all the accompanying adventures have been great. I am down in Kombo right now for a HIV/AIDS task force meeting and to saw goodbye to Ellie and Mike. Up country it has been hot hot hot, and not in a everyone has ab's sort of way, which they do. Other than the 120 degree induced heat rash things have been great. I discovered that finally sleeping outside has many pros and cons. Pro because I don't wake up dehydrated and sweating and con because mangos randomly free themselves from the tree and quickly pick up a "star wars speed (I will get to this later)" towards my head. My mosquito net helps out and now I have a sheet up, but the first night I was lucky to not get a broken nose. Whew!

The URR (Upper River Region) crew decided to have a Bike Tour 2010 ending with a Jolly Bah concert to help fundraise for a school in Brendan's village. In 4 days I managed to bike well over 100k while narrowly avoiding such hazards as small children, roaming cows, and heat stroke. Here are some pictures from our adventures.

Above is a picture of us resting. We had camped out by the river and were tired as it gets. I spent the night debating on whether hippos would come from the river or baboons from the bush to get us. Kasey dog managed to scare everything away.

This is a picture of Clervi and a semi delicious "power food" he made with power drinks, oats, seeds, ect. It was weird but semi good.

This is a picture of my feet on our last day of biking. I look a little Gambian right?

This is Clervi and I taking a rest to make sure the whole group caught up.

This is a shot while I was trying to change Kasey's bike tire. It took forever and in the end we had to abandon our two sick crew to find their way on a donkey cart. Some small kid ended up taking them on "the worlds smallest donkey cart" and after hours of looking for a car, they eventually made it back to Basse.

Kasey and Mike torturing a 2 year old child. Notice the baby on Kasey's back.

This is a shot of the river from the cliffs by Kasey's site.

Clervi's rash. Didn't stop him from enjoying our outing.

The gang on the first night. Notice Ashley's purple hair. Good times were had.

The whole trip was good and full of great food. Clervi made us some great mixture with koos koos, Kasey had her family make us domada, Jenna (who's site is amazing and the bike ride in was one of my best sun sets here) made some calazones (probably one of the first times this has ever been made up country), and Brendan made us some curry. Up on the cliffs we heard baboons and in the market the police we all about befriending us. I got back home to the surprised faces of my village being amazed that I had biked so far.