24 km/h on average absolute record of this journey!
This wonderful final part of the Rift Valley with fields, lakes and even vineyards … it has passed fast but not too fast not be admired.
When you go like this you would never get off the bicycle, it is like making love for hours with the woman you love.
I left with the idea of reaching Meki, or a bit further in front, I thought the road was going to go up and my legs were hurting, so the 117 km to Meki seemed a reasonable goal … then once on the saddle the sun came out, the road was beautiful, not too difficult, and the wind was with me … so slowly slowly I started thinking about reaching Mojo, so tomorrow I will get to the 2380 m of Addis in the late morning or early afternoon, organize the bicycle maintenance … Today I understood what goes through the mind of those cyclists who start to break away not very convinced and then kilometer after kilometer they understand that they can make it.
The euphoria from break away has progressively taken over me. So much so that at the 90th km, in the bakery in this surprising Ethiopia, where I went in for a refueling on the go, I must have looked deranged to the waitresses, I got a slice of cake, a avocado juice, a coca cola, then another slice of cake and another avocado juice everything in less than 10 minutes. The saleswoman behind the counter was laughing … so before paying I told her I wanted another slice of cake … she was shocked … then I said ‘I was joking’ … everybody present started laughing and wished me a safe journey.
In the same bakery two old men with the face full of wrinkles, asked me worried how I can manage when it rains … my father too who had another operation today at the foot asked me if I am ok … then a Ethiopian guy with an American accent and a belly like up to now I saw very few in Ethiopia asked me about the journey … then when he overtook me driving a sport car asked me if I wanted a bottle of water … I got it and drank it at the end … when I was pulling like mad very flat on the handle bar many people told me ‘very good’ … all these things make me smile and feel less alone … and I was forgetting also many ‘welcome!’ …
During breakfast I met a Japanese rasta, tall and skinny with the dreadlocks who arrived here passing through Korea, Dubai, and Khartoum to save money on the direct flight. Holiday of five days 2 of which spent in bed for dysentery … with what he must have eaten on those planes … He explained to me the difference between rasta and bobo rasta, these last ones are those who put the dreadlocks inside the tabal and are more fundamentalist …
In Shashamane and the following town I saw many gigs, which are the concurrence to the Bajaj, the copies of the Ape taxi. On the roads there are too heterogeneous vehicles, cars, carts pulled by donkeys, trucks, gigs, motorbikes and … myself. It may be because of a shock campaign for road security, which shows on some advertisement bill-boards images of different kind of accidents, but the Ethiopian drivers are the ones who respect me the most.
Many cows, sheep and donkeys cross the road causing sudden brakes, delays and immediate changes of direction, I saw that one of the methods which the sheppards, more or less young, use to make them go back to the sides of the road … is to through stones …
Shashamane N 7° 2’ E 38° 6’ – Mojo N 8° 59.41’ E 39° 12.14’
175 km