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Where have the water fountains gone?

‘You want to go to Laon? By bicycle? … it is not possible it is 50 km!’

During this journey it has happened to me often to ask street directions, and to receive a not required feasibility judgment, it matters little that you explain that you come from Zambia, that on average you cover 130 km per day, on the face of these people remains an expression sure that you will not make it, accompanied by a sympathetic smile … they are sure it is not possible … like the guy I met this morning in Reims …

The adverse wind has come back together with the cold!

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Armstrong …

This surname will remind us just jazz, the moon landing … and a fraud facilitated by those who closed their eyes …

I left Langres with the idea that justice triumphs, sure late, but it has won … cycling has lost … probably the gold book of the tour will be retouched … some seconds of those long seven years have themselves run up against disqualifications … some were allowed doping others no … this I was thinking in the first kilometers … Continue reading →

The behind wheel too has left me …

The first kilometers pass by among the country side, houses with pitched roofs so much to almost reach the ground, many posts ‘a vendre’ on houses and businesses, many petrol stations, I do not know if it is the crisis, but since I entered France this is a constant, many businesses and houses are for sale … I assume they are good deals for who buys and sad stories, or relief, for who sells … between the Italian and French farms and the African ones there is the same difference between the room of a very tidy child and a messy one …

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But were the uphill not supposed to end in Moncenisio?

Up and down, with two tough uphill the first of 6, and the second of 8 kilometers … the first I took it right between midday and one when the heat was at its maximum … I would have dived in one of the many lakes I met today …

Today I clearly perceived one of the big differences there are between cycling here and in Africa, the absence of people on the road, in Africa, apart from the desert, the road aggregates people chat, play, work, cheer the musungu passing on that strange bicycle … here on the road there are no people … and if it is true that at the end of Ethiopia I would have liked a bigger privacy … it is also true that here it seems to me to be busy in a closed door time race … to make the exception some drivers and children who wave greatly from the windows … in Africa almost every day somebody would stop, get off the car, ask me information, and take a picture on the mobile …

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May the bicycle have slept badly?

As soon as I started off, the bicycle started again with the same problem as yesterday! The chain had no intention to keep still on one of the crowns fixed to the behind wheel …

The about four kilometers from the pass passed quite quickly … I was even chased by the house keeper of the refuge because I had left the keys in an unconventional place, then down to Lanslebourg Mont Cenis there is a bicycle mechanic, but he tells me that it is too complicated for him … I have to go to St Jean de Maurienne 57 kilometers far!

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Tough stage, with mechanical problems, and rain!

I am at 1876 meters and I have almost completed the Moncenisio!

As soon as I left the ‘Albergo delle Miniere’, I immediately understood that the bicycle was not going to last long, the gear was changing automatically, the behind crowns, the so called freewheel are finished, the teeth of the crowns are by now too short for the worn out chain shortened in Egypt … Continue reading →

At the end let it be Torino, Val di Susa, Moncenisio, Albertville …

… to take me to London!

I did not want to start off early, nut not even so late!

At four in the afternoon … luckily here it becomes dark around nine!

There is not one particular reason for this late departure, simply a sum of many things, which caused me to be still at home when Kwesha arrived from Zambia to start her path at the Faculty of Political Science of Milan, at that point I could not say bye and go … so between an advise and an ice-cram … I only started moving at four! Continue reading →

Slept until midday!

I would have woken up even later if I had not received a series of phone calls to which I answered from the beyond …

Today I went very slowly with everything, meals, washing machines … I had to borrow a T-shirt from Claudio … because I washed the others … and to go home to Venegono I do not think about it … and I spent a lot of time with my father who was in the hospital more than I have been around … we saw the pictures of the journey … I still have to decide if I will pass from Val di Susa or from Switzerland … my father wanted a recap of the stage from the beginning until today, here he is satisfied! Continue reading →

Early wake up today, 6,30 … 

… I will never get used to waking up early!

As soon as I leave the hotel I meet the taxi driver to whom, through the door man, I asked directions yesterday on the best road, he wanted to take me himself making way with the taxi … because on the road to the airport cars go very fast and ‘I do not know how you will manage by bicycle’ … I do not know when was the last time he used a bicycle … he tells me that I am going in the wrong direction … I trust him … and as a matter of fact three kilometers later I have to turn around … and get again the road the infallible naïf Blackberry indicated me all along … I arrive to the airport around 9,30 for one of the earlier check in of ever … the shipping of the bicycle which was worrying us is easy … I pay 330 Egyptian Pounds extra … we deflate the wheels … we put adhesive on the pedals and handle bar so they do not move during the flight … Continue reading →

Today I slept long, wrote emails, got rid from the bags of the stuff which had reached the end of its life cycle, like biscuits and Chinese batteries, I looked for and out contacts together, invoices, flying pieces of paper I had accumulated, and not yet lost, in these two months …

I could have gone to visit many things in this city which has immediately become my favorite in Africa, even supposing that geography apart, Cairo and Egypt are Africa. But I did not, both for the late wake up, and because I did not want to close myself in a museum of mummies or to get a boat for tourists, when outside there is this alive city, real, which moves even though the Ramadan inevitably wears out the vitality of who fasts. I preferred to walk to Tahrir Square, which was the center not only symbolic of the revolution started in 2011, I am personally very cautious on these revolutions only time will tell if these revolutions, which have caused and are causing thousands of deaths, were for the better of the populations. I was reading a few days ago that in Tunisia, where there is one of the most advanced constitutions in the Arabic world, if the draft of the new constitution will pass as it was proposed on the first stage, women will not be the same as men, but complementary … Seeing this Cairo like this it seems impossible to think that this country can end up in the hands of the most intransigent Muslims, a first step to understand how things will go is understanding if and when elections will be called. Continue reading →