Music Is My Radar - Blur

So besides the animals what else was memorable about the bike tour...

Well to begin with, I'm gonna have to say the flat tires. Considering I got 4 of them in the first 20km of the trip!! Beginning with the one I changed the night before the trip I had to change a tube roughly every 5km, which put a serious damper on the start of my adventure. With no idea why I was perpetually flat, even after checking over everything, I managed to coast into the first major town and find a bike shop. After taking one look at my tire and handful of ruptured rubber in my hands the tech had a solution...my tubes undersized for the tire and weight I was carrying. These undersized tubes were the ones supplied to me by the bike company with the intention that I was to be cycling across Africa...I think someone dropped the ball on that one.

After replenishing my supply of spare tubes I was back on the saddle and pedaling with a vengeance to make up for all the lost time from that morning. Only problem was pedaling through the interior mountains during the middle of the day in the heat. In face the thermometer on my bike hit 40+ mark as I sailed along the asphalt on my 20km/hour pace. At one point I pulled into a roadside rest stop and walked up to the girl dripping with sweat and ordered a coke, a root beer, and an orange soda...then had to persuade the girl to give me all three at the same time, then she watched as I downed all three like I was doing shots at the bar. Thats the best part of cycle touring, you eat and drink all you want and never be full.

The worst part was sleeping at night in the tent, it was unbearably hot, I think I prefer the old method, throw a tarp on the ground and lay down. But the showers were much better this time around, at least one night when I slept in a police compound in the middle of nowhere. They even let me use the garden hose to shower, while all the cops kids crowded around giggling. Good thing I kept my shorts on...I don't think it would have been to good a place to be experimenting with indecent exposure!

And then there was the music...the music got me through it all, the heat, the flat tires, the ignorant islams waving me the finger trying to swear in English, the wonderful muslims buying me drinks and giving me fruit, the sunsets on the beach, the monkey attacks. Its always the music.