Today is the last race day of the Gorge Section – a half day race to lunch with a convoy ride into Addis Ababa in the afternoon.
I woke up after an OK sleep – and a bit behind schedule in getting myself ready – but everyone left at the same time in the end. We tried to broker a fairly slow ride that day but that didn’t really happen in the end. There was myself, Scott, Paul, Horst, Adam & Jorg – and we started off at a fairly moderate speed through rolling hills. About 30 km in we caught up with the Brams and that’s when things started getting interesting. There followed one attack after another, from Paul, from Horst, from the Brams. I felt good on the downs, dreadful on the flats and found a real energy for the climbs!! So I kept telling myself I should stop going so fast – but the day continued in this way – we travelled through lots of little villages and farmland – so many donkeys! We lost Adam and Jorg and I was sitting is second place – Horst would attack and I would close the gap, he would attack again and I would respond – this kept happening for a while. We are now going really fast up the hill and I am wondering who is in the group behind. We are close to the finish line – about ½ km and I am at the front. So I just suddenly decided that since they had been trying to drop me for ages I was going to win this one! I looked over my shoulder and could see them all lined up behind – so as soon as I saw the flag I just took off – and managed to cross the finish line ahead of them all. It was a good morning!!
It felt good knowing the race was over for the day – in fact the Gorge Section was also completed! Now I could relax over lunch – Kendra was there so we had a good chat. We knew we had an easy 30 km ride followed by a 10km convoy into Addis Ababa. After our lazy lunch Scott and I left together. Still rolling hills and we knew there was a climb just before the 30km stop point. We were looking for macchiatos and wanted to do some coke stops. We were enjoying riding through the villages and seeing all the people – all the kids were in school uniform – and appeared slightly less poor – though there was the same madness everywhere – even in between the villages there are still people walking everywhere – as well as the donkeys of course!
We had a good 20km ride and found somewhere to stop - no macchiatos, but tea, coffee and orange – I went to pay – 8 birr (about 50 cents) – I couldn’t believe it was so cheap – I gave her 10 birr – such a good deal!! We stopped at a few other places on our way through looking for macchiatos – we were now passing a few factories as we got closer to the town. It was a fairly good road. We had caught up with a few other people so were now riding in a much bigger group. We finally reached the climb at the end of the ride – not a restaurant at the top as promised but a stand selling drinks and bananas. We had to wait here for all the riders to arrive – about 2 hours. Finally we were ready – 10km downhill into Addis – we had to go really slowly – my hands were killing me from braking so much. They were stopping traffic for us – people everywhere waving and clapping and wondering what was going on! We had to pass right through the centre of town and eventually reached the campsite after about an hour! What a relief! We immediately went to the bar for some drinks, then quickly unloaded our bags as we were really hungry as usual – about 10 of us set off in a taxi for the hotel. It was a really nice hotel – Scott and I shared a room – there was WIFI and so we had really good internet access for achange. We went straight out for food and found a great burger place – we decided the burger we had was the Ethiopian equivalent of a Big Mac, plus chips and a freshly squeezed mango and pineapple juice – very good!!
We then returned to the hotel and hung out there for a while – then a large group of us went for another meal. The restaurant was rather disappointing – it had been recommended by the Lonely Planet Guide – but it was nothing special just overpriced! However there were about 12 and we ordered some wine and it was good fun. We met the new sectional riders – Kendra’s friend Kari, Heather and Bastiaan’s girlfriend, who is not planning to bike just ride the truck and maybe do some running.
Back to the hotel and off to bed!
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