Uhoh! A strange pattern is emerging! Move 1000km and then stop for long than expected periods of time. Maturity in long-term travel is how I am looking at it – focusing on the detail of an area as opposed to trying to gauge how life is like while passing through for 24 hours or less. I’m in the capital city of Kampala, once known at the city of 7 hills, but with large population growth my knowledgeable quote became stale about the early 1990’s soon morphing into 13 large hills surrounding various neighborhoods of the city of 1.2 million people. It’s the most relaxed East African Capital city I’ve been to as of yet, although it has its own challenges to deal with. Traffic is a mess, but certainly nothing compared to the throngs of traffic in Nairobi, or the sidewalk driving that occurred in Dar Es Salaam Tanzania. Minibuses cart people around, but more common is the Boda Boda, a 125cc or less motorcycle that often rides dangerously through oncoming traffic lanes to get passengers to their spot at a fraction of the price of the standard taxi vehicle. Still, public transportation in East Africa is expensive. 5km usually equates to $10 to move you around, but don’t think the drivers are making lots of money at it – some will wait for half a day for a fare due to the amount of competition they face. I’ve been riding, but not much due to some health issues I was working through. In fact, my last post had me writing about heading to Jinja before coming to the capital, but after a frustrating day of riding on dirt roads (my choice), lack of energy (medication reactions), getting a rock thrown at me by kids in a village (first time), and punching someone in the head enroute into Kampala (I told him 3 times to stop touching my stuff), I opted to B-line into a backpackers hostel where I knew another cyclist was residing and opted for rest.

I managed to connect with a friend who I met in Nairobi a few months earlier, moving over to their house, being introduced to their friends spending a few days riding on speedboats on Lake Victoria (which is much more scenic than what I saw on the Kisumu, Kenya side which seems to be infested with weeds), tests of physical endurance dangling in the air with safety belts on obstacle courses, and checking out the nightlight, albeit sober, without beer in hand, as I watched the rest of the patrons evolve into jovial to flat out stumbling messes. Do I look that as well too? On the weekend I was even invited out to Entebbe to go camping, some 40km away from Kampala – a lush green affluent neighborhood of greater Kampala where fine restaurants exist housed inside planes recovered from the 1973 Palestinian bombing on Entebbe, Pizza places that surpass any similar type of restaurant in the Western world both in presentation, price, and taste. Camping at the Entebbe Sailing Club was lush, even though the skies opened up and drenched everything on the day that all  us campers decided to stay extra. Lesson learned even off the bike, stick with the original plan. Highlight however was being able to spend some time with a Ugandan friend I had spent a lot of time with in Nairobi. Saying goodbye and even See ya soon sucks, but thankful for the time spent. I also got over my issue with eating food that was covered in insects, Our food was discovered by ants, and based on news I’ve read recently, the UN actually recommends we chow down on these things more often.

A water funnel on Lake Victoria – WOA!

Just shake em off, it’ll be fine!

Due to Dam building in Ethiopia on the Nile river, Lake Victoria’s water level is 13feet higher than normal and rising. There is a pier in that photo, but we are also walking on Soda Crates to get to the boat. It’s also causing problems for Egypt, who have little flow from the Nile river that so many millions of people desperately rely on for living.

Upon return to Kampala  back at the hostel, I found myself turning into a small celebrity. A few days earlier the press had caught wind that I was in town and came for an interview. I’m usually pretty aloof to accepting these sorts of opportunities – press being notorious for grabbing bits of information and spinning them, or misinterpreting what was said. I was pleasantly surprised to catch wind that articles had appeared on the Daily Monitor’s website in multiple pieces (One being a review of my book, The other talking about travelling through Africa, with the other giving a synopsis of my travels). It wasn’t until I was out in public where I was stopped by many people proclaiming that they had seen my photos and story in the newspaper. I tracked down a copy of the newspaper, flabbergasted by the detail and the fact that I managed to get the centre pullout of the Sunday newspaper. Here’s a picture of the full article, You’ll have to click to zoom in on this high-resolution article.

Then things got weird. Someone appeared at the Backpackers Hostel I was staying at curious to put a face to the name, quickly turning into a week of nonstop entertainment, as I struggled with the side effects of my medication (vomiting, feeling like getting punched in the gut every hour, irritability, lack of appetite, insomnia, headaches, constant urination woo!). First, I found myself as a guest on NBS TV’s morning show “The Morning Flavour” – answering a few questions, conveniently avoiding questions that could affect my personal safety, even cracking a few jokes along the way. You’ll even get to hear me talk the way I talk to most people in Africa, conveniently missing words when not required, and even having an accent that sounds similar to a Quebecquois. It was a cool opportunity and many photos were taken with the crew and staff. Funny, I think they just grabbed photos of the website, so there’s a ridiculous amount of headstands from around the world broadcast across Uganda.  A few surprises were said throughout the show (which unfortunately I don’t have access to, only the clip below) involving my appearance the following night at a “Ballet Performance” – I tried to keep my surprise down wondering what that meant. Am I performing? Am I dressing up in a tutu? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

WBS TV Morning Flavour Crew

The Ugandan National Contemporary Ballet was performing in a theatre in preparation for their European Tour which is commencing in the upcoming months. During costume changes I found myself on stage fumbling through a story of how I ended up in Uganda, answering the common questions I find myself asked on the road daily, and plugging the sale of my book – Desperately trying to get rid of some copies due to the added weight and strain it is causing to the ride, ripping bags, with no ability to carry extra food in the event of desolate times. Fast forward a week later and I only carry a dog-eared colour copy that I show to others – the rest have been picked up and placed for sale in high-end restaurants around town and bookshops via contacts I have met). A strange experience at the Ballet, but a wonderful 1.5 hour show which contained a lot of laughs and some black light trickery for the final performance.

Uganda National Contempoary Ballet

It didn’t stop there. I found myself the next night in the VIP section of a Fashion Show, put together by a well-known musician in Uganda, Hellen Lukoma. The dress code was white, so I wore all black and figured my skin colour would act as the entrance for the white – It worked, and the show was a nonstop parade of who’s who in the country of singers, actors from popular TV series, and movies. My arm was sore from shaking hands all night with my new ‘friends’ opening up many more doors to events in the upcoming weeks. At some point over the past few weeks I’ve felt a bit paraded around, but at the same time has been quite fun, a different experience, and I have some good stories to tell and memories of Kampala. Kampala now takes the title of my favorite East African city.

I had to wait for a few weeks to get the go-ahead from doctors that I was clear to ride away from Kampala, so I occupied my (sober) time doing writing, performing some well needed bicycle maintenance, patching holes in panniers, and getting a chance to meet other travellers along the way. Technically, while the internet has been available I’ve started to repair many of the issues with this website as I’ve heard reports of Blank white pages, issues with rendering of maps, and other oddities. I reset some of the links on the gear page as well to go to proper sites again, keeping the website up to date is a lot of work! The next update of the website will remove complexities of navigation as it’s grown well beyond what I originally intended this “blog” to be. I also spent considerable time fixing errors in the book – 3 months after publishing typos keep being reported to me – shamefully I update the manuscripts and reupload them to both the electronic and hardcopy publishers. I handed out a couple of complimentary copies in return for reviews (good or bad!) and it seems to be adding a bit of buzz to the book along the way. If you, the reader can commit to a review on Amazon, GoodReads, or Smashwords I’ll even send you an electronic copy at no charge as well! Finally, I worked on a new presentation, filled with all sorts of flashy video effects to keep people interested on a screen in stead of looking at me while I do public speaking. When I do it of course

 Cleared from the Doctors, I’m now ready to head west to travel around Uganda a bit more before crossing into Rwanda. I’ve had a surprisingly awesome few set of weeks in Kampala, and although I’m tired from the constant go-go-go aspect of the events I’ve attended it kept my spirits up through some pretty tough mental times. Bonus, is that this slowdown means the rainy season is pretty much over, so I’m looking forward to sleeping in the bush again as opposed to schools, being able to have a beer after riding, and new places to explore. Not looking forward to the mountain that are approaching – Rwanda, my next country is known as the ‘land of 1000 hills’. Gulp.  I’m committing to sticking on Tar roads as much as possible to keep my spirits up and not piss me off for riding . I can’t head out yet from Kampala it seems, as a review of the entrance requirements for Rwanda have since changed for Canadian’s! What was once a no charge/knock on the door of the border with a smile asking to come in/90 days no questions asked policy has morphed into an apply online/hand over $60 USD/hope they accept you affair. I was looking forward to one of the few “free” entrance countries to save a few dollars, but that seems to be a thing of the past for any future countries as well. Was good while it lasted. The only problem with the application is that the online website is down, so I will have to find an embassy in town here and wait days to gain approval. Frustrating, but certainly is a sign of things to come for any countries in the future as they all seem to have their own entry requirements, some even having to send my passport back to Canada for a few weeks. How this is going to go down is beyond me, paired with few warnings from separate foreign affairs offices it’s bound to see that my plans are about to change yet again – Hang around, It’s gonna be a wild ride..

Sore Butt, stiff legs, waking up at 3am on the dot to go outside and have a whizz, seems like I’m back it in full force. Uganda is the perfect country so far to get conditioned for what I know is coming – the country of 1000 mountains, Rwanda. I’ve been cycling here a  little over a week now and I have to say that this is a very cycle tourist friendly country. The locals, while they will tell you that it is ‘flat’, are close. Light rolling hills can usually be taken care of in gear 5 if I have enough momentum from the previous descent, or 1, my highest gear if I want to take it easy. Most of the time I want to take it easy. The Sun is tough, with temperatures reaching 30 degrees by 10:30am, but unlike Kenya and Tanzania; water is plentiful by the hundreds of boreholes strategically placed everywhere.

Not once have I been in a situation of running out of water like I so often found myself in the previous two countries, and more often than not I can find a mother, or a child who will help me fill my bottles, in return I fill their 5 gallon jugs which they balance on their had so well on the way back to their house. It’s not so much houses here, Uganda has definitely been held back by nearly 25 years of hard times by insurgency, a few bad neighbors, and tough economic conditions. The houses are back to the round mud huts with straw on the roof, often clustered 3 or 4 together, a small family nestled in a plot surrounded by their crops that they so tenderly care for regularly. If they were lucky, they may have one of the monstrous Mango trees that are so popular in the area containing thousands of the near ripe fruits that can be eaten at any meal, or desert. They say June is the optimal time, unfortunately I’m a bit too early. No worries, there is other fruit readily available for purchase in every little village that appears 10 kilometres or less from the last one. Pineapples stacked in piles, avocados, and huge fruits that I always used to regard as ‘bombs’ back in Canada when I’d see them in the grocery store known as Jack Fruit. I’m off beer for a while, so I have a new vice, One Pineapple a day, 2 handfuls of Bananas, and a chunk of Jackfruit to refresh myself throughout the day.

Investors take note – 20% annual interest – Amazing.

They’re fearless, they’re back, they’re baboons.

Ugandan’s are inquisitive bunches! Many questions, a huge amount of smiles, and waves nearly from everyone I’ve met. I must say hello and briefly converse with 200 people per day it seems, the men usually huddled in a group under shade, and to the women as they ride bicycles back and forth and keep their families together. In fact, it’s a 10:1 ratio of women to men riding the bicycles. True to what the teachers said last week, the road conditions turned positive and I was able to ride on some nice tarmac without bumps jostling through my body – other than the many rumble strips and speed bumps one sees entering into towns. Some have been flattened nicely by overweight semi trucks and I usually find myself quickly shifting to find the easier route at a split seconds notice. I’ve only had one negative encounter with a person so far, which was in Lira, where I stopped for two nights rest staying in a guesthouse, heading out once for an appointment followed by lying in bed the entire day. I had been riding around the city upon first arrival, and was tired from 5 constant days of riding, leaning my bicycle up against a tree. A policeman came by, and we made conversation before he bid me farewell letting me know he was heading to court across the street. He was in Black and White Camouflage. Next, another Police officer came by, dressed in Olive attire and asked a few questions to me aggressively. My phone rang and I answered it, letting them know I’d need to call them back – it was then he noticed I had a camera in my hand.

Lord’s Resistance Army Memorial for lives lost from 1987 – now in Lira, Uganda

“Are you a journalist?” – No, I replied. “What are you doing here?” – I’m riding my bicycle around Uganda, I replied curtly, as I had just explained that to him less than a minute earlier. “Why do you have the camera?” – Because I was taking photos of this monument over there, I think it’s pretty important stuff! “You can’t take pictures in Uganda, I will detain you and lock you up!” as he started to walk away. I bit my tongue, said a few words silently in my head and watched him walk over to the court. Hey, some people have bad days. Other than that it’s been good. The reason why I took a picture of the monument was to make sure I firmly remembered the conversation I had the day before with 40 people beside a water borehole. Very polite, curious group of adults, with more standing across the street (To which the group apologized for them, and said they were too shy to approach), asking all sorts of questions of my trip, what Canada was like, agriculture, family life. I explained for 30 minutes, and then they taught me a few words in their language, at this stage I can only remember two – Yoga! (Yoh-Gah) – meaning How are you, Bear (BAYr) – Almost cartoon like remembrance for those, and I showed them what Yoga was for the west and other parts of the word to laughter. Sadly, they also explained about why there were so little people in their area and why they were so behind. Victims of Insurgency over the past 20 years decimated their population, collapsed their economy, and brought 40 tribes of Uganda all together from the massacres of one man, Joseph Kony. What an asshole.

Sure, the name stands out – I saw a film on him in Malawi last year which you can see below, which received both positive and negative criticism from around the world. I found it a bit flashy, but it certainly got the message it wanted across, and in fact a lot of the stories are true. This guy was/is a despicable man, coming into villages, lining up the men, having their throats cut, little girls raped, boys taken away to be consumed as child soldiers into his Lord’s Resistance Army, and mothers limbs being cut off in front of their family members. The stories I heard, the piles of bones I was later shown put a hefty lump in my throat and I waved them all goodbye after 2 hours of talking settling into a school for the night where fireflies danced around and a lightning storm was off in the distance. I was surprised when nearly two dozen men appeared upon sundown as they had heard news of a white man who was in the area, introducing themselves as stakeholders of the community, wanting to wish me a welcome, all shaking my hand, saying thank you for coming. I’m starting to find huge similarities with Uganda and Zimbabwe in terms of the wonderful people, way of life. There seems to be a bit more products available in Uganda though.

Start up that Torrent client – 10MB goes a long way!

The villages and cities that I ride past are the typical fare, 6 or 7 brick buildings, sometimes painted with a bright colour sponsored by either the phone company, a paint company, or a painkiller company, to many locked and closed doors. I don’t even know what are behind the doors, as there is no signs advertising products or no people around. The odd door will be open and you may find some dry goods for sale, but most of it is found by ladies sitting under a tree selling tomatoes, green oranges, or other things. Sometimes you might even find someone making Chapati’s offering them for sale for about 10 cents each – I stock up on a handful of these circular starch bombs and munch on them in the morning as the porridge I picked up in Kisumu, Kenya just isn’t covering the bases of my nutritional requirements.

Jack Fruit – these sticky sweet things are bigger than my rear panniers!

I’ve been staying in schools an awful lot more than expected, but it’s turned out to be interesting, with hundreds of kids watching as I setup and tear down camp in the morning, followed by a question and answer session when I am done my daily chores. Highlights are the presentatons I do in the morning for the P6 and P7 (Think 12 years old’ish) students about my journey, a lot of positive remarks and a lo of hand waving. They’re getting something out of it judging by their huge smiles and laughter when I crack jokes. Seeing 1000 children run out of the classrooms and run after you waving upon exit is a memory that you can never let go of.

A mango tree. Let’s do the math. Yield 2000 mangoes, x what must be hundreds of thousands of trees here?

I’m about halfway through my riding over to Jinja, again back to Lake Victoria for a few days rest before heading into the capital city of Kampala. Riding has been good, going through nature conservatories, national parks with huge rivers to cross, although I found one day marred by a constant headwind, bothered in my head about how I was to fix my stoves which both pumps both broke at the exact same time. I figured it out under shade today, likely back pressure causing the pump flappers to rip and become loose, although I have to remove the fuel filter to make it work properly. One step forward and two steps backwards, they say! I have a feeling I’ll have a positive experience the rest of my riding before rest with the friendly smiles, interesting chatter with the locals, and gobbling down fruit to keep my sanity in check. Way to go Uganda!

Can’t forget the coconuts either. See why I am camping in schools and NOT under trees during rainy season?

Elevation Chart

Yahoo! I actually made it to another post where I’m still riding! Based on my last few failed attempts it seems that I’ve hit the road and I’m committing to it. The road – ugh, Welcome to Uganda, Dave. Getting here was one thing, and then it quickly went down hill fast. On the road. Not the grade. I should find new euphemisms.

When I last wrote I had just left Nairobi, perhaps 2 days in where I was scrambling to get the muscles in my body conditioned before any surprise hills came. Surprise! They came. And they came in hard and fast. 25km of steep grades leaving the days total of 1600 some odd metres ascended sapped my energy, brought frustration as I was turned down for my very first time ever at a church to spend the night. Ok, it was just some groundskeepers in charge of handing out water for the Red Cross who said no, and couldn’t quite grasp that I wanted to have them fetch the Priest’s number so I could give him a call to get authorization. Luckily I had been spotted by many people in the town and word was circulating that someone was roaming around looking for something. A friendly fellow named Richard took me over to the school where he taught at and I was able to settle off. In the morning, 300 children swarmed around my bicycle waiting on their very last day of school of the term asking every question under the sun. I gave a few candies to the ones who asked the good questions, and we managed to grab a bunch of photos too. It’s all downhill the Principal said to me as I rode away to make my way to Kisumu.

It’s all downhill for he first 40km, and it’s also all mud. Major diversions in place for a new road to be built made it a slip and slide as I had to shift from side to side on the road and hold on so that I wouldn’t topple over. Covered in mud, both bicycle and myself I seem to have had every truck driver who passed me stick his thumb out the window and give a congratulatory toot on the horn. Then came the climbs again, what the? Worth it to see the Kenyan Highlands where it seems all the Tea is coming from. I saw where the Coffee comes from a few months back, and the tea fields are something that legends are made out of. After a 30km descent at 60km an hour I was at the lowest elevation I’d been since leaving – the temperature rose because of this and I slowly pedaled forward, stopping along the way at a few churches to sleep. The one thing that stands out was the breakfast I was invited to, where I was offered fertilized chicken eggs for breakfast. Hey – I eat Chicken, I eat Eggs, why not eat halfway? Quite Salty but very tasty none the less. Good protein too apparently!

I arrived in Kisumu, which is situated on the edge of Lake Victoria, meeting some people I had been in contact with for a few weeks though a hospitality network, taking advantage of some free Wi-Fi, before being escorted by bicycle taxi to the “Ghetto’ as it was affectionately called. The Kisumu Slums. I’ve been in worse locations before, these places had brick walls, electricity and power, compared to some of the places I’ve stayed in and rode past in Africa, so I shrugged off my Couchsurfing host’s comments and made myself at home for a few days, hanging out, getting some good solid rest, meeting people involved in a few Bicycle NGO’s, and a surprise visit to the hospital. I’ll get to that in a few weeks when it’s all over – but I’m now being forced not to drink any beer for the next five or six weeks, while at the same time going in for tests and samples once a week. Everything will be ok – as long as I watch my stress levels. In fact, friends told me that I should stop and rest in nearby Jinja, Uganda for a few weeks, but I’d only go crazy sitting idle, and going back to my reasoning of never being sick while riding, this seemed like a good way to shake my toxins out. It’s working.

Sega, no, not the video game company, but a small township in the western edge of Kenya not far from the border is where I ended up one night saying hello to a friend Julia, and her roommate Leo, whom I met both on the other side of the country in Mombasa. They live at a Catholic Parrish providing healthcare services for people in the community (top problem – Malaria) and provided a bed for me and lots of food. They even helped me out by buying two of the books I’ve been carrying, considerably lightening my load and making bags easier to shut. I’ve gotta get some stitching done again on a pannier as after overfilling it, I ripped it wide open. It’s ok right now, but the more I delay, the worse it will get. Stop procrastinating Dave!

The same went for my power generation kit. I’ve been using my new phone pretty regularly, and it slurps on battery life. I’ve also been listening to music again, as I managed to find a drill press in Kisumu to make my new speaker mounts, as my old ones were too small. Hello Stereo, and hello weird looks from people as I whiz past them playing quirky music. At the end of the day though, my batteries are dying, not charging. I took everything apart again, and found that the connectors going to the hub needed to be reinserted. Will monitor from now on, but I really want to have some good days where there is nothing to be bothersome, and that everything acts optimal. The riding itself is great, and my body is in fine form, the odd ache in the back, pain signal In my leg or knee, and yeah, the ass hurts, but those are to be expected. I’m even getting reasonable sleep. So it is, the routine again. Although I’m not eating cookies before bed anymore – sorry, have to add you to the list of things I can never eat again. African Cookies. I hope the next one is Nutella, as I heard a rumor that in Kampala, Uganda’s capital that it is the same cost as it would be in Germany, and the Germans love that stuff. I don’t know what I am, but I’m all over it as well, memories of it being frozen in 2010 in Québec city and being able to run a spoon across the had brown goodness and place a few shavings into my mouth. When it’s warm I just end up eating the whole damn jar in one sitting, so it would be nice for some cool weather.

It’s not going to happen though, as it’s unreasonably hot in the day, and mostly cool at night, no matter which side of the equator I’m on. I crossed it for the first (of many times coming soon), eventually meeting someone later on that day who told me that the world apparently moves 7 different ways instead of the two ways we’ve all been led to believe. He’s fighting for a world clock in that area to be used for research around the world. I’d always heard that things are lighter at the equator than they are at the poles, but I wasn’t going to test, I did see that Sunrise was at 6:32am, and Sunset was at 6:46pm – so it’s obvious things have gone a bit awry, or we’re not so round after all.

Crossing the border was an easy affair, as I changed all my Kenyan Shillings into the new Ugandan Shillings – which have an awful lot of 0’s attached to the end of them. Any change I had left turned into banana’s hanging off my bag, and a big Pineapple that I salivated about for the next 5 hours after crossing the border, being told by Kenyan Authorities I needed to fly back to Canada if I ever wanted to return, and with a smile by a female Ugandan border officer who said I was welcome for 90 days and could even work if I wanted to tell them. As I waited I watched the debacle of what’s been happening US Stateside in the east coast. It was a terrible thing to occur, but at the same time I’ll leave all my comments to myself other than “Whatever happened to Innocent until Proven Guilty?”. I’m not sure if it was related today, but I received a lot of yelling, and some pretty negative remarks from people who assumed that I was from my southern Neighbor as opposed to Canada. Ugh – I hope people can keep their cool.

I had an experience that has been on my mind sometime in the middle of nowhere in Kenya. I entered a Petrol station to buy a cold drink. When I paid, the female attendant looked at me and said – I have met you before! I get this all the time, so I shrugged it off and said that no, this was my first time in the area. She then proceeded to tell me when I arrived in the mid morning, bought a bag of popcorn, and a 500mL Coca Cola, paid with a 200 shilling note, and sat outside by myself before leaving. This is where it gets strange. She told me she had met me late November, 700km away. It finally clicked with me that I had been in a similar situation, and was amazed that she could remember the exact transaction. It turns out she travels around helping people out at the chain of petrol stations who are on leave which is how she ended up in the middle of nowhere. I can only wish I had the same memory that some people I have met on this trip have.

Uganda seems to be ok so far! Crappy roads, but awfully nice people who insist I come and stay with them, even if they are one room shacks with 5 people living inside. Politely I decline and give them my phone number and contact information in hopes we’ll see again and move forward. Rolling hills but nothing steep to strain myself over which is a huge plus as I pedal off the effects of high powered medication, learning a new unit of measure, p/H (Pukes per hour). Yup, it’s happening multiple times, and I’ve now just given up on stopping entirely and letting it go while riding, using a bit of water to rinse my mouth when finished and slamming a piece of ginger in my mouth to suck on afterwards. Should be all over soon. Many people seem to be quite confused that I’m going up this way towards South Sudan, as the typical route is from Nairobi straight to Kampala, but I figured since I’ve wanted to get myself back into riding, exploring, and trying new things again, I figured a 900km detour would be worth while. Besides, what’s the rush?

A blessing in disguise came today, as I declined the 3 offers to stay in some ones house for the night, looking for some peace and quiet. I was riding along for 45 minutes in drizzling rain, spying churches (last resort, knowing that tomorrow being Sunday brings people in the morning), rest areas (hard to come by, but I found a chicken coop the night before that worked well to sleep in), and finally Schools, which always seem to have a stash of rain water and a roof to protect from the nightly downpours. It turns out I met a few teachers as I pulled in who were living on the grounds, who said I could pitch my tent under the aluminum roof, but I could also go inside if I wanted to. Right when they said this the clouds opened up and downed more rain than I have seen in weeks in one spurt, flooding the area. I made it within 45 seconds, and smiled as I wheeled my bicycle into the very modern school classroom. It even had two power plugs being unused! The power was out, but it eventually turned back on, allowing my components to start charging since they have been neglected do to the loose wires I mentioned above. So that’s that, nothing special, business as usual.Apparently the roads get better in a few hundred kilometres, whatever.

Elevation Chart

This all seems like I’ve been in this situation before. It’s April. I’ve set out again on my bicycle. I’m fighting back emotions and wondering if I’ve done the right thing by saying goodbye, and not sticking around and seeing if I can make a life where I settled for the past few months. My ass hurts. I’m sunburnt, my stove doesn’t work, I’ve run low on water on the first day, and metering what little I have so that I can have some breakfast in the morning. It’s going to rain. Am I crazy? Am I safe? I’m situated at the top of a viewpoint pitching my tent illegally over looking the Rift Valley. I’ve been here before, but this year is different. I’m in Kenya, I’m leaving with more gear than I ever have carried at one time, and it’s rainy season.

This brings me onto the 4th year of traveling, or whatever I seem to think I’m doing. I’m sure if you looked hard enough in the archives a not so matured traveler once wrote on this very blog that the journey was to be3 years around the world. Well, that’s done, and I’ve blown through that easily by finding comfort in a hot shower, a stove, and even a kettle to drink a half dozen cups of tea in the day.I’ve made friends everywhere I go, and said “See ya soon” to each and every one of them, knowing damn well the likelihood of ever seeing each other physically again is next to nil. Social media helps, but is a really poor replacement. All I see are cat pictures now.

I have to say I came really close to settling in Nairobi. I made the comment when I put the deposit down on a huge house in a pretty well off area of the city that everything, and I mean everything needed to be perfect in order for me to stop. See my post regarding the Travelers Curse. Well, reality bites – It wasn’t perfect, and the housing situation was almost nightmarish. It brought a few things to light in me of where I really want to settle, and see myself stopping, which, I honestly can’t tell you what that is, so I’ll travel again. I also found I haven’t sorted out some of the things I set out to do – communication still needs a bit of work, Conflict Resolution is also sitting way up there on a look into topic – now some things are entirely out of my control, but I’m sure I could have handled my end a bit better. Nairobi is a clusterfuck of a town, the traffic is how legends are formed, but there always seems to be something to do. It’s cleaned up over the past few years and moving away from it’s ‘Nairobbery’ moniker, but that doesn’t mean anyone should not drop their guard. I even went through a presidential election, where I holed myself up in my house for a week with a sack of rice, a bunch of beer, waiting for the results to be announced, in fear of mass riots like what occurred in 2007. Nothing happened, a week later I still had most of the rice, I found someone to deliver beer a couple days in, and everything went back to normal wen it was all said and done when the country elected a President who is indicted and is to stand trial at the Hague for Crimes against Humanity.Nice!

So that’s that. I’m travelling again, and contrary to what I posted about in December 2012 about flying to Europe, I have had a real long time to think about things. I came here for a reason. I wanted to see what it would be like as the one that everyone stared at, heckled, spoke in strange languages, tried to get money from me, befriend me, or just want to have conversation. I wanted to reset a few things in my head about society, the need to have certain things in your life and what were the actual requirements. Coming to Kenya was sort of like a little vacation. They’ve got a beach! Lots of it, if you are wiling to take a 10 hour bus ride, which I certainly did over 8 times over this past 5 months. You can buy things! Food, Electronics, Clothing – amazingly at reasonable prices, and if you are to buy one of the things, the process is efficient, and trouble free. Hell, I even own a suit and tie again. It’s a long story, and I’d rather not get into it. I did my best to throw it on a grille with gasoline but was stopped by an invitation to a wedding in a nearby country. OK OK.

That nearby country is Uganda, which is where I’m headed to. No rush, No fuss, Pole Pole as they say – slowly but surely. I tore my hamstring the last time I went for a ride after being off the bicycle so long, only going the 240km some odd distance from Arusha, Tanzania to Nairobi, Kenya – remember that? I’ve decided that I will give this another go again, and commit to finish what I started. I’m not going back to Canada, the 3 year period is over. There is not going to be a couple dozen people waiting for me at a finish line saying congratulations, that was all nonsensical fairy tale thoughts to prime me for the first departure. This is my life, and I wander by bicycle, I suppose searching for that elusive Shangri La. For you, the reader, this is fantastic. More Posts! More Reviews! More Ramblings! More Photos! Thanks for sticking with me for so long. I might write a book about Africa when I finish it, but I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself. It seems that I’m getting positive commentary on the one I just published, and based on my motivation and how long that one took, it might be easier to just go to the Casino and throw everything on the Roulette red 23. At least you’ll know if something’s going to happen in a minute or less.

I need a project. I just can’t ride a bicycle aimlessly. I need to occupy my time. In 2010 it was Project me – sorting through all the noise in my head. In 2011 I built a huge online bicycle network and started writing the book. In 2012 I spent my time focusing on that book, and less focusing on what was going on. The last two involved the computer. I don’t want a project that revolves solely around a computer. Sure, I find solace in it after a long day of being pestered and yelled at by dozens of people throughout the day, and I can lose myself in it momentarily, but I need something else. I’m carting around 12 books with me, that I intend on selling hell or high water to people that I meet, and considering public speaking again, after a 2 year hiatus. I’ve got the presentation format, enough stories, and am more than comfortable with speaking to groups of people (I first learned that you should imagine everyone in the room is naked? Everything’s been peachy since then), and I met someone who has journalistic skills and PR capabilities to introduce me to. Why not? Anything to get these damn books off my rear of my bicycle. They way so much!

In between the resting, relaxing, friend making, landlord cursing, I had a surprise visit – my Dad! I tried to think back when I arrived in Africa for the first time, watching it through him was an experience in itself. He had mentioned a few things that he wanted to see, and we covered all of those bases, but only in the way that I could afford. That meant cost saving Matatu’s (small mini buses that hold 14 people) which constantly blast reggae music, drive on sidewalks, and into oncoming traffic, did another Safari, this time on the way to Mombasa, where the Indian Ocean resides, and drank an awful lot of beer and vodka. Nice to see the guy. Seriously, it’s been years. He was nice enough to fill an entire suitcase for me of things. PVC Pipe ends that I can’t find here so I can mount new speakers to the bicycle, mail that has been piling up for months since my last mail drop, ahh what the hell, cut the crap Dave – The Suitcase was filled with about 9 new shirts, 3 new pairs of pants, new boots, a new Amazon Kindle reading device (I’ve dumped the 3G version, I rarely used the feature, and think that one that provides a light to read from is waaaaay more useful as I was burning through the AAA batteries on my headlamp pretty good), and a new phone (back to Android! This time a Samsung S3), among other things. 22 books, about 300 pairs of earplugs, and even a spare coffee cup. I went to town, and actually left a bunch of it back in Nairobi, knowing that I’ll be able to get it back in the coming months when going to a wedding. Everything had been falling apart over the past few months, my socks had holes in them, and shirts were starting to come thin. I already knew I was going to continue across Africa, and I wanted to make sure I had my little comforts going on before I set off. I still haven’t reset fully from the West it seems, still need a few things here and there. If a random person looks at my pictures, they may assume that they were taken over a few weeks period, but that’s just because I wear what I like, and what I like has been that way for 4 years. Seems pretty odd for someone to say he doesn’t like change when its all around him.

Dad left, and I started the process to head out. Stretching, Surfing on peoples couches again, and the long drawn out process of saying goodbye. I only said goodbye to half of the people I think this time, it takes a lot out of me to do it. So I’ll just become that bad friend who may have to deal with someone saying that I should have told them, getting an earfull/screenfull momentarily, and let them know that I may return. I don’t know what tomorrow brings, heck, I found myself back in Zambia for another 3 months last year remember? Random!

So with all of that, Welcome Back, and get ready for some more stories. Oh, and pictures of me being completely filthy. It’s rainy season here, and on clockwork rains at 5pm where I was staying, and this night is no different. Amazing thunderstorms shake everything around you followed by amazing forks of lightning that come down in rapid fire every few seconds. The aftermath means that there is mud everywhere on the dirt roads, now turned into mini lakes, which also heightens the risk for Malaria, and Waterborne Illnesses – What fun! More to come. I can’t wait! It does make for nice riding throughout the day, where the clouds burn off by 7:30am, and then move in at about 2:30pm. This just means I’m going to have be a whole lot more social asking for roofs to camp under – I mean sure, the tent is waterproof (or is it with all the thorn hole rips?), but packing a wet tent is sure to have me frustrated, so it’s a trade off. Just like life, and just like every decision we make.

Elevation Chart

A few months go I suffered a loss of my every day carry knives, the Leatherman Wave Multitool, and the Spyderco Mini Manix. Crushed from the loss after finding out the latter was well out of production, but that’s a whole other story in itself. I took advantage of a friend being able to deliver products from Canada over to me in Africa, saving on costly shipping fees ordering replacements and was quite surprised when the new Leatherman Wave Multitool came with a few extras, namely a set of bits for the screwdriver, and a little flashlight, that conveniently fit inside the included holster for the Multi Tool. I’d already been carrying a headlamp when traveling and a few key chain lights to light up the way, and if all else failed, the torch function on my cellular phone but figured – what the heck, let’s see how this extra piece of equipment works out – if I lose it, nothing is lost as it came as a freebie.

Leatherman 831529 Wave® + Led Lenser P3 Combo

Price: $89.97

(0 customer reviews)

Fast forward six months later, and I found myself lost without the unit when it suffered a technical issue, not knowing what I’d do next without my everyday carry torch. Through a combination of being in the right country at the right time and responsive customer service I’m back in action with my light. I’ll get to those details later, but first lets focus on the good stuff. Check out the LED Lenser P3BM Flashlight.

Small enough to fit in your pocket or on a keychain at only 9.45cm (3.72in), this little black beauty contains an impressive array of specifications in this 42gram unit. Led Lenser has been perfecting their product line since 1994 in Solingen, Germany. Initally refused a loan from the bank to produce their first light, the two founders persisted and now see their company grown to over 1000 employees worldwide to support their 50+ products produced. This obviously caught the eyes of the Leatherman Tool group in Portland, Oregon – they flat out bought the company in the past few years, which shows where the promotional freebie came from in my recent Leatherman Wave purchase. Leatherman’s known worldwide for their variety of tools and life long warranty and I think they’ve added a great product line to keep their company relevant and generating sales. Once you buy one of their tools you hold onto it until it’s either lost or stolen.

LED Lenser 880018 P3 LED Flashlight, Black

Price: $14.36

(23 customer reviews)

The P3BM advertises itself as a 14 lumen throwing device for 31 metres for up to 6 hours and 30 minutes, also being advertised as IPX4 rated, essentially meaning that it can be used in rain, or handle splashes of water, but can’t be immersed. Seems reasonable enough for this little unit. Now, before we go any further, I’m not a scientist, just a regular guy who uses products to their maximum, in some petty extreme environments. You’ve likely read some of my other reviews, so this will fit right in with them. Let’s see what you get when you purchase a Led Lenser P3BM in retail:

Presented in an attractive cardboard box, you start to get to the inside after removing the small paper strap surrounding the outside, flipping the top lid away from you. A brief series of specifications greets you on the inside of the top flap, and what we’ve all come for, is the unit itself. I found this to be a fairly impressive packaging for a product of it’s price range. You can see the flashlight in the front, on the right in the rear, a small clip, which you’ll see momentarily, and a single AAA battery that is used to power the torch. Bonus points to LED Lenser for not cheaping out and giving a crap battery with the product like we see with so many manufacturers these days just to be able to flaunt that batteries are included. If you lift the compartment holding the flashlight and components, you’ll find some other goodies at the bottom of the box, alongside a product manual, a small foldable product catalogue.

You get a small lanyard to tie to the tail end of the flashlight (which I’ve reappropriated to use for my Canon Camera, as after a year and a half of heavy usage the old one snapped), and a nylon holster that can be attached in many ways to a belt, or whatever you need as it combines a detachable belt loop with Velcro and a snap. The flashlight fits snugly inside the holster and can be removed quickly when attached horizontally on the belt. LED Lenser has also includes a small removable pocket clip that would be useful in some situations. To be honest, all the accessories have also found heir own uses and homes, falling into the category of “I needed exactly something like this for (some other product)”. All are useful and well made, that don’t look like they’ll rip, break, or snap after a few weeks of usage.

Opening up the LED Lenser P3BM is simple, at first. The tail piece simply unscrews revealing a small compartment to slide the battery into. A couple turns of the tail end switch seals it back up for usage, and you are ready to go, by pressing on the rubberized switch to power the device. An audible and a haptic click lets you know that you’ve activated it, and if you use just a small amount of pressure you can temporary power up the unit to briefly without having to activate the switch to power it down again. I found my 2nd units rubberized switch to be bigger than its previous model, and a bit tougher to press, due to it being more flush to the back-end. Still, on the older unit I never showed any wear on the rubberized switch revealing any of its innards and damaging its water-resistant rating.

The top of the flashlight where the lens is located also is removable for maintenance, revealing a single LED with nothing else. It’s a simple design, for a simple product. Removing the top confused me at first as the unit can be rotated to focus and adjust light.

LED Lenser tacks a BM suffix to the end of the model name, standing for Blue Moon. They state that due to their special manufacturing process of prismatic structure, they separate parts of the blue spectrum from the white spectrum. The blue components are thus projected to the edge of the light cone and the result is an excellent, clean white light to read by with a mellow blue circle to frame the reading area. Their claim is that Blue Moon optics make reading and general viewing easy on the eyes for less eye fatigue. don’t know otherwise, but prefer to have no blue, but all white. Regardless, this little unit packs a powerful light even during the day, useful in many situations. The light itself is focusable, with a light pressing of the top of the rotating lens unit, either or out. Check out if you can see the elusive moon.

Adjustment all the way Out

Middle Adjusted

No Adjustment, Wide Beam

I find myself pulling out my P3BM multiple times throughout the day to get a closer look at components, to read small lettering, to guide the way for people walking in the dark in what is turning out to be a rainy Nairobi, and late night ventures to the washroom when inside a hosts house not wanting to trip over something and wake the household up. I’ve even used it as a bicycle light. As I mentioned, LED Lenser claims a 6hr 30 minute operating time. In my non scientifical way I’m unable to back up their claims, yet only speak of the real world usage of a few minutes a day over the course of 6 months, sometimes more and sometimes less. I noticed the light getting dim, and then one day nothing at all. I was ready to change the battery.

I couldn’t actually remember the battery application when I received my first unit, and went to go and remove the tail cap from the unit, struggling to find that it had seized. I grabbed a piece of fabric to protest the metal casing of the flashlight and used the pliers of my Leatherman Wave Multi Tool to start the counter-clockwise removal process. It came off easy enough and I was faced with yet another compartment hiding the battery, and I was looking at the other side to the rubber switch. It seems that these units can have all parts replaced in many ways, and I had opened up the access point to the switch, which is good for a couple million uses apparently. How would I get access to this new component I wondered? I tried again with the Multi Tool, careful not to strip the now exposed threads to gain access to the battery. I tried 7 or 8 times before putting the tail cap on, not wanting to destroy the unit. I also experienced the struggle with getting the front lens assembly off, which I now relate to not knowing where I should actually be unscrewing, and ended up turning the focus assembly for 30 seconds before realizing I should look at the manual, which I had conveniently pitched in the trash months earlier. I went to the LED Lenser website, and tried to navigate around the site, hoping for a manual. I couldn’t find one t the time (I found one on their US site while writing this review!) and ended up just sending customer support a message asking for help, a manual and any advice.

It wasn’t 12 hours later that I had an email waiting in my Inbox from the Eastern African rep for the LED Lenser product line, asking me to come down and see him at his office which was a mere 5 kilometres away. It seems that the support team at LED Lenser had followed my email signature that advertises this very website and found that I was in Nairobi, Kenya. Unfortunately I couldn’t head to the offices right away, so I suffered for 14 days without the usage of my LED Lenser P3. When I was able to I went tot the offices, met a friendly fellow named Glen who talked to me a bit about where and when I bought the unit, and disappeared for 3 minutes. He came back stating that he had put the unit into a vise and tried to remove the cap to the battery compartment, handing me a brand new unit. It was then I found out the units have a 2 year global warranty. He guessed that somehow water must have entered into the unit and the battery could have corroded seizing the access point, and had never seen anything like it before. I asked to look at a couple of the other products that LED Lenser offered, ranging from a big heavy duty flashlight that took big D cell batteries to a newly released rechargeable unit perhaps double the size in bulk capable of putting out over 400 lumens operating on a single rechargeable battery. I put the new unit into my Leatherman holster and rode my bicycle away, happy I didn’t have to wait for weeks sending the faulty unit back and waiting for a new one to come in the mail. I used the new light less than 30 minutes later with a grin on my face.

I never expected I’d find such a use for a small pocket flashlight on a daily basis, and now find this is an essential every day carry device when on and off the bicycle. It’s small enough to be concealed and adds little weight onto my belt not getting in the way of doing what I do. The battery life is outstanding and the body puts up with drops bumps and getting wet from sweat or rain. I’m a bit concerned about not being able to open up the rear tail cap in the future, and will report back once it’s time to change the battery on this new unit. In the meantime I’ve applied a small layer of grease to the threads to make sure it doesn’t happen again in the future anyways. While I didn’t pay for my unit and it came along with another tool, I’d recommend anyone who needs, or doesn’t think they need a light to use in situations the Led Lenser P3BM flashlight. Sure, there are cheaper options, but you get what you pay for, and for me, a company that stands up to their product and goes much further than a couple of bucks saved.

LED Lenser 880018 P3 LED Flashlight, Black

Price: $14.36

(23 customer reviews)

From the “Holy cow, it’s finally done department”..

Hello again, Still here are you? Thanks for waiting – I went into hibernation mode for a few months trying to finish a project that has been ongoing for way too long.

2 years after starting, I can finally say it’s done; What a relief!

It seemed that many people I would meet while traveling on the road from 2009 to 2011, wanted to know more about the whole process of traveling by bicycle, why I chose to drop everything, and taking the chance to live without a home for an extended period of time. At the time I was content with the output of the thoughts on this website, but eventually my mind started to wander and trace back the root causes, and just what I was trying to accomplish here. So I decided that I’d try my hand at writing a book. I don’t know how to write, well, that’s not true – but I just write what I feel.

I started taking notes in early 2010 of what I’d like to see on paper, eventually commencing the writing of the book in 2011 while riding in the United States of America. I blew through self imposed deadlines left right and center, hoping to have written 1000 words a night at the end of the day of a long ride. Boy was I wrong. I shelved the project half a dozen times and continued making notes, before heading over to Africa.

I had a few other projects on the go at the time and 2011 quickly turned into 2012, where I spent some time writing again while in Zambia, figuring it would be completed by the time I set off for Zimbabwe. Wrong again, 1000 words a night were the goal as I was pedaling into Mozambique, and stopped come Malawi, again letting it sit. Anyways, fast forward to December 2012 – In Kenya I finished the first draft of the book, happy with the result, sending it over to 4 people for reviews. Happy that I completed it I waited anxiously for their reports.

In the meantime I surely didn’t know what else I was getting myself into.. I decided that I was going to self publish, eager to learn the ins and outs of how things worked, solely as a learning experience. To put it bluntly - Publishing a book is hard work. Writing is one thing, Layout is a whole other world. In the process I learned to properly use a word processor, desktop publishing system, finally understand image layers, understand differences in colours, differences of paper, thickness, bond weight, reflective properties. That’s on paper, then comes electronic versions, different size orientations, screen resolutions, and file size restrictions. And if that wasn’t all – registered trademarks, copyrighting, ISBN codes, and distribution marketing to stores around the world. Whew! I had it figured out – until the edits came in!

Fast forward to the last day of February, where I’ve crawled into a hole for the past 2 months, rarely answering phone calls, spending as much free time as possible to get this prepared for publishing. 5 total rewrites later, and 24 edits, managing the cover design, and arranging for sending proofs halfway across the world so that people could report back on which type of paper, and colours looked best, borders vs drop shadows, corner fades vs 90 degree edges. I’ve put a ridiculous amount of time into the writing, editing, formatting, layout, distribution, and now production, but my effort is now showing -

May I present to you: Tired of I.T! – How I learned to stop worrying without the Bicycle. I’ve created 3 editions – One being a colour copy, a stripped down Black and White paperback edition, and an E-Book (yes there’s even 3 editions for whatever reader you use). I didn’t intend on so many editions, but once I found out the cost of the colour edition to print, I decided to make an alternative. Colour printing is EXPENSIVE! I had no option of doing a “Hybrid” Black and White with colour photos book, so the cost to print is nearly 8x the amount as the Black and White copy. The text is the same between the two printed editions, just that the Colour has more pages. The eBook copy is a replica of the Colour edition. Still – I’ve learned that unless you are a big author, and expect to sell thousands of copies,  there’s not much profit to be made out of book publishing – The colour edition is basically at a give away price, I’m just happy to share this edition with people, where I’ll make a little bit to keep me going forward with the Black and White copies. Once they leave this website though, it’s literally pennies on the dollar as the big stores take their cut and use their buying power to bargain down the distributors. Whatever – If it gets me a few beers I’ll be happy. I didn’t write it for the money, I wrote it to get thoughts that have been rolling around inside my head for a good 30 years – achieving one of my goals that I set out to do when riding – clear the mind.

With a clear mind, I can now use this free space inside the head to focus on new things, clearing away the clouds, and movnig forward. I hope that you’ll get something out of what I’ve written, as it might encourage future writings. I’d love to hear your comments, but I’m also ready for the criticisms that go along with it. I can take a few tomatoes, just stay away from the rocks, eh? I’ve made a point to use paragraphs, proper spacing, and all sorts of things that you don’t usually see here on this website. It actually looks like a book!

You can visit the book’s page here: http://www.tiredofit.ca/book/ – Over the course of the next few weeks it may or may not appear in the bookstores – Ask your retailer if it is coming in, and see if they can order some, otherwise you can always contact me privately and see if I can hand deliver you a copy For you Africa readers, there’s a couple dozen coming mid march. I can’t stop thanking A. Nyirenda, S. Stanley, A. Hryhorczuk, B. Otieno, for putting up with my constant harassment during the edit process, A. Girdler for my on again, off again ideas for the cover (do you know where the inspiration came from?), E. Corica for the proof review and showing it to the handful of people to get their input, and all of those people that who’ve been expecting a bit of communication from me, whether it be with a phone call, an email, or over a beer over the past few months. Now, let’s go have one.

More riding to come shortly..

For the long term readers – remember way back when in 2010 while I was travelling across Canada and met a bunch of fellows looking to film a movie on their way up to the arctic? Well, we all made plans to go through the journey together, filming the process with multiple Point of View cameras, a few professional digital cameras, some handhelds, and far too many microphones that didn’t work properly. For the new readers – in 2010 with no planning I foolishly thought it would be a great idea to ride far north on a bicycle and record the experience.

That was 3 years ago – many events have occurred since then, but the whole experience is not forgotten.  I’d like to let you know that the footage actually made it into a film, and happy to say that it’s being broadcast across Canada starting January 29th, 2013 on the RadX channel which is dedicated to extreme adventures. I’d classify the journey as extreme, with no food, no water, bugs, bear, bison, huge rabbits eating my helmet, stealing coffee cups, and insanity from the sun not setting the entire time. Get comfortable with the name Riding North – it’s a simple no frills name for a complicated journey that spanned 1900km over the course of a month through a few territories of Canada and varied road (?) conditions.

With no service for cellular phones or contact I actually separated my self from the other riders for quite some time –  my appearance is sparse, but for those who want to have an idea of what its actually like heading up into the ‘circle’ it’s a good view for anyone interested in crazy travel. I don’t think I’d want to go through this journey ever again, and watching it all compressed into 50 minutes is bringing back fond memories with a lot of cringing and shaking of the head at the same time from the blatant disregard for being in the wild.

For those in Canada – it’s going to be playing on RadX at various times all the way until 2018. You can see the RadX channel in Canada at if you have satellite: Bell TV Channel 1627 – if you have IPTV: Bell Aliant TV Channel 477, Bell Fibe TV Channel 1627, MTS Channel 494, Optik TV Channel 645, SaskTel Channel 473, and on many cable providers channels across the country. All is not lost though, if you are aren’t in the country you can view it by downloading the movie from the website http://www.ridingnorthmovie.com or even order a DVD.

Here’s the Trailer:

A big shout out to Steve Langston, Reghan Bieber, Chris Mitchell, and Ryan Mitchell for the experience – That was nearly 3 years ago – Hope you all are doing well!

It seems I’m repeating patterns here – Posting once every 2 months – quite the unexpected shift from the daily posts a few years back. I am alive and well, but certainly in a different headspace these days just being led by random encounters, activities, and the lure of hot weather. I’m still in Kenya, back in the capital city of Nairobi. So much for heading in to Uganda, flying to Greece or Cyprus as mentioned in the last post – there are a few reasons for it.

My hamstring wasn’t feeling better until the end of December, where I managed to pick up a nasty cold with moved into a flu leaving me bedridden for nearly 9 days. I was the cause of it obviously, I took up cigarette smoking again, and like in the past quickly moved from 1 cigarette all the way to 1-2 packs a day in a short amount of time. Happy to report that its been 40 days since the last one. Such a problem for me these past few years. Instead I took up drinking beer instead. That’s been cut out as well as it’s quite easy to get into the habit of downing a few beers every day just for the sake of it.

Upon trying to leave Nairobi for a trip I went and pulled my hamstring again – obviously a sign that it wasn’t fully healed and that I should just take it easy. Besides, I have a project that’s been bothering me for 2 years now, and I’ve done a real poor job at getting it finished. I’ve been making noise on twitter and Facebook about what it is – but the cat’s out of the bag now: I’m writing a book. The writing has been done for quite some time now written in various different countries, yet only focuses on the first 3 years of travel through North America – Africa’s gotta wait until I’ve had a chance to digest this place. Through many rounds of edits from friends who have stepped up to go through the process with me I’ve realized that I’m a terrible speller, and even worse at grammar. Worse, My paragraph structure is terrible! So, on Edit 19 I feel confident that I’m getting close to the end of this 238 page piece of garbage. Over the years people who have gotten to know me have made the request that I write something to explain how this whole trip came to be and after many months of thinking I decided to go ahead with the project, for the sole reason that it would be nice to get a lot of the thoughts and feelings I’ve been holding onto out on paper and out of the brain. Already a sense of clarity has come over me and I feel like I’ve swapped out a brand new memory storage device in my head. Obviously there’s some dirt in there that’s going to ruffle some feathers, but I’ve done my best to tell a factual story of the trials and tribulations of mental burnout and the shift to a simpler life using the bicycle as a mechanism for assisting in finding balance. If I can stay focused and get the final pieces together we should see it published in 3 weeks from now in 3 editions, a limited colour edition with pictures, a trade paperback in black and white, and an eBook loaded up with extra content such as video, more pictures, and some other writings. Being the stubborn fool I am I’m handling all the tasks on my own, learning a a lot about the publishing industry, layout, the tools of the trade and how much of a pain in the ass Microsoft Word is. It’ll get done eventually – I need all the support I can get.

I read something a few months ago and it hasn’t left daily thoughts since then. It’s called the Curse of the Traveler – this piece pretty much explains all of the emotions I’ve felt over the past year and likely the reason why many other long term travellers have hit a wall after the 3 year mark – check this out:

‘The travelers curse – An old vagabond in his 60s told me about it over a beer in Central America, goes something like this: The more places you see, the more things you see that appeal to you, but no one place has them all. In fact, each place has a smaller and smaller percentage of the things you love, the more things you see. It drives you, even subconsciously, to keep looking, for a place not that’s perfect (we all know there’s no Shangri-La), but just for a place that’s “just right for you.” But the curse is that the odds of finding “just right” get smaller, not larger, the more you experience. So you keep looking even more, but it always gets worse the more you see. This is Part A of the Curse.

Part B is relationships. The more you travel, the more numerous and profoundly varied the relationships you will have. But the more people you meet, the more diffused your time is with any of them. Since all these people can’t travel with you, it becomes more and more difficult to cultivate long term relationships the more you travel. Yet you keep traveling, and keep meeting amazing people, so it feels fulfilling, but eventually, you miss them all, and many have all but forgotten who you are. And then you make up for it by staying put somewhere long enough to develop roots and cultivate stronger relationships, but these people will never know what you know or see what you’ve seen, and you will always feel a tinge of loneliness, and you will want to tell your stories just a little bit more than they will want to hear them. The reason this is part of the Curse is that it gets worse the more you travel, yet travel seems to be a cure for a while.

None of this is to suggest that one should ever reduce travel. It’s just a warning to young Travelers, to expect, as part of the price, a rich life tinged with a bit of sadness and loneliness, and angst that’s like the same nostalgia everyone feels for special parts of their past, except multiplied by a thousand.’

-

Make any sense? It’s not a new thing that’s come in the past few decades – Former US president Thomas Jefferson wrote this to his nephew on August 10, 1787 from Paris.

Travelling. This makes men wiser, but less happy. When men of sober age travel, they gather knowledge, which they may apply usefully for their country; but they are subject ever after to recollections mixed with regret; their affections are weakened by being extended over more objects; & they learn new habits which cannot be gratified when they return home. Young men, who travel, are exposed to all these inconveniences in a higher degree, to others still more serious, and do not acquire that wisdom for which a previous foundation is requisite, by repeated and just observations at home. The glare of pomp and pleasure is analogous to the motion of the blood; it absorbs all their affection and attention, they are torn from it as from the only good in this world, and return to their home as to a place of exile & condemnation. Their eyes are forever turned back to the object they have lost, & its recollection poisons the residue of their lives. Their first & most delicate passions are hackneyed on unworthy objects here, & they carry home the dregs, insufficient to make themselves or anybody else happy. Add to this, that a habit of idleness, an inability to apply themselves to business is acquired, & renders them useless to themselves & their country. These observations are founded in experience. There is no place where your pursuit of knowledge will be so little obstructed by foreign objects, as in your own country, nor any, wherein the virtues of the heart will be less exposed to be weakened. Be good, be learned, & be industrious, & you will not want the aid of travelling, to render you precious to your country, dear to your friends, happy within yourself. I repeat my advice, to take a great deal of exercise, & on foot. Health is the first requisite after morality. Write to me often, & be assured of the interest I take in your success, as well as the warmth of those sentiments of attachment with which I am, dear Peter, your affectionate friend.

-

It seems that my journey took a drastic shift upon the death of the boy in Zambia and where I found friendship with the owners of the German Restaurant, returning once again in July not only to visit but to pick up a few extra bucks along the way to further travels. I’ve been roaming around with little to no plan, and no real urgency to change the idea. What I don’t want to happen is to turn into one of those 50 year old wrinkled up fellows roaming around this continent with a harem of girls and a story of “how it was so much better 20 years ago”, still with no concrete place to live, constantly jumping from country to country as the visas expire. I’m also becoming quit tiresome of the Couchsurfing/Backpackers/Hostel situations. These people that I’ve met are so warm and welcoming, but at the same time the experience is exhausting and draining where sometimes I just want complete and total silence. I got it in the bush, but missed out on the wanting to speak to people the minute I needed to – and very much missing the concept of having longer term friends where we can laugh about the past in terms of months and years as opposed to the past nights stories. After I pulled the hamstring I decided that I couldn’t go through the routine anymore and actually went and rented a place in Nairobi to live in – It didn’t work out after 4 days due to the landlord overbooking the rentals and I struggled with figuring out what was next in life – did I want to travel while injured, should I go to the beach? What about the book? Well, I did all of it, and ended up back in Nairobi and found yet another place – An old furnished colonial mansion with fibre optic internet, television, and 6 bedrooms which I’m looking to find people to occupy for the steal of a price of $400 USD a month. For now it’s a safe space to rest, go to the gym and get my muscles working properly before I set out again, where to? I’m not sure, but my Congo dreams have been very vivid again, but nothings set in stone. ‘Get the damn book done Dave, and make some friends for some memories, and for gosh sakes, don’t start smoking again’ are the things running through my mind at present. I do have some good stories to tell however about the past 2 months involving drinking blood, going to court along with the usual befriending of strangers, police officers, immigration officers and other shenanigans. I’ll write about those in a few days.

Make sure you don’t ride too hard during the first little bit or you’ll tweak your hamstring – The last piece of advice as I took possession of my first bicycle the Surly Long Haul Trucker in October of 2008 from the owner of the local bicycle shop in Vancouver Mighty Riders. Good advice then, and I didn’t held onto that advice for a few years making sure I didn’t put myself out of line. Well that was until I took 5 months off from cycling and just decided to hop on my bicycle leaving one grey morning from Arusha northbound into Kenya with the intended stop in Nairobi a short 280km away. Sure there were some climbs, nothing too dangerous of a grade, but getting back into things was a bit of a change of pace from what I was used to. Riding 75km on the first day, looking down at my GPS surprised to see only after 3 hours I had made only 18km made me realize that I needed to just take it how it comes, make sure I stopped for water and took many breaks as I spoke about in the last post.

Caves? Do people live here?

The sun, even though I’ve been spending many hours in the sun over the past little bit on my backpacking adventure, paired with it being nearly straight overhead me at most of the waking hours surprised me by adding quite the red glare on the back of my neck, tops of ears, nose, and arms and shoulders, likely due to my idea that wearing a sleeveless shirt would be a great way to resume touring. Enter the frustrating sleep at the end of the first day with aching skin, trying to figure out how to find comfort on an air mattress again and a thin sleeping bag. There were lots of spots available on the side of the road once you head 50km north of Arusha, and trying to make an effort to sleep undetected found 4 dozen thorns embedded in my tires resulting in an end of the day flat – so much for stopping at 4pm and relaxing, finally sliding into the tent at my usual hour of 6:30 after it was all repaired, dinner was made and consumed, and I checked out the bicycle for any other things gone awry after a first day of riding in so long.

With few villages to pass I held onto my remaining shillings which rounded up to no more than $2 stopping frequently for a Coca Cola sugar dose and heading off not letting too many people stop to stare, ask questions – as I frustratingly tried to listen to music on my new phone. Problems with the Pedal Powered Electronics Charging System on my bicycle quickly through a wrench into the delicate charging plan where I quickly depleted my cache battery which powers my GPS, Speakers and Phone. Listening to music that sounded 10% slower and stuttering frequently the phone sipped away at the internal battery life at a fast pace and eventually drained through the battery leaving me with silence for 6 hours on day two of riding. Frustrations abound at how long it took to charge the phones battery due to its capacity (1800maH) made me realize I had made the wrong decision in purchasing and as much as I didn’t like the jailed restrictions of the Apple IPhone, it was certainly capable of handling more than a day of music playing, usage of applications, and maybe even a game or two if I found myself bored at the side of the road. A cable going from my Hub into the Busch and Mueller E-Werk unit had to be replaced as it was misplaced while I was spending time in Zambia, a failed attempt at using my wheel in an emergency when the person who was storing my bicycle ran into a pickle. I’ve sorted it out I think as best as I can, and will continue to monitor the situation as it goes.

Crossing through the border from Tanzania to Kenya was a breezy affair, in and out in 30 minutes due tot he lineups from the many busses that cart passengers in between the Eastern African Union. Heading up to the Kenyan Immigration Office prepared with my finger on an old Kenyan Visa, and the other finger showing my picture and rest of identification worked – I managed to sail through as the guard eyed my visa with confusion thinking that it was valid and stamped me through without any costs, bringing a smile to the day as the roads opened up with wide shoulders, stopping at a souvenir shop that I promised to stop at along the way when meeting the owners in the past. Immediately they recalled me at “Tired of it!” and we hung out for a few hours before I set off into a new country to see the possibilities. Nothing but waves, smiles, and friendliness as expected passing through small villages and Maasai territory. Not wanting to deal with thorns I found some rocky roads parallel to the highway and pitched the tent early in the afternoon while cranking the tunes loudly beside a cattle pool. I figured that it would keep me secluded, until after the first 10 minutes I was visited by sword and machete wielding Maasai quite interested and curious at the sight of a red mzungu in the middle of their land. Again, nothing but smiles – by the end of the day close to 40 had visited, so much for stealth camping. With the sky opening up it made for amazing viewing while settling off to sleep and falling back into the routine of eating, cleaning, reading until exhaustion came.

It wasn’t long before I started heading into more populated areas meeting groups of Doctor’s along the way (wanting to introduce me to their sisters, never fails) and into the bustling city of Nairobi. I miscalculated my trip wanting to stay outside of the perimeter but quickly found myself locked in the concrete jungle after climbing a fairly steep hill at the end of the day. With no possibility of a stealth camp the challenge arose to find a safe place to sleep, stressed out a bit by my fresh tube exploding as I rode high speed overtop of a train track – So much for Continental Tubes! I opted for the failsafe – a church in the area – While I couldn’t stay at that particular church one of the members took me down the road into a gated compound where I was secure for the night, explaining my story a few times before retiring into the tent inside of the “House of Luke” excited for what things would come in Kenya’s capital.

Dubious Packet of Powder found on the side of the road – What?

I’d been contacted over the internet by someone following my journey who wanted invited me to their house – and after riding through some rather hilly but scenic areas of Nairobi, parks – gardens and forests I arrived in the highlands where that wonderful black juice known as coffee comes from. I’m not talking a few plants, but thousands of acres, and so much for bushes – these were coffee trees! My hosts family had a coffee farm and took me along for a tour to show me the process of how coffee was grown, processed, roasted and sent off over to the western world. Believe it or not, I’ve only had one cup of pure Kenyan coffee in my time in Kenya, and this was in the Nairobi airport! Some interesting things about coffee that I picked up, is that the coffee themselves are berries – flowered from a tree that can live for decades – starting off as a hard green shell before turning into a red berry, which is actually quite sweet. Don’t eat the skin though unless you care to have the runs later on. Inside the coffee berry is usually 2 beans inside that are quite slimy. Not so good to chew on, so usually get spit out – sometimes you’ll find a 3 bean berry, which doesn’t quite have the same taste as the elusive one bean berry. They’re picked (the farm I was at picked 400kg in one day) and sent off to a processing plant where the husks of the berry are removed, and then dried for a few days. Usually at that point in time the raw beans are sent off overseas, but sometimes you’ll find a roaster nearby for local sale – albeit very rare. Once every 3 months the coffee plant produces new berries – so this is quite a lucrative industry for someone who has the land to support it.

In the highlands you’ll also find considerable amount of Bananas – these things are heavy on the trees! I picked up one of the large banana leaves and figured it would be great as a fan before I was told that the liquid that oozed out of the cut end would stain my skin and clothing forever – quickly turning black, and also faced the risk of being bitten by a banana spider which are known to jump more than 20 feet at one time to land on something to snack on. I put the leaf down. Living in the village brought many stares, but also many friendly smiles and people interested to know how I ended up in such a remote place – as I explained I was resting for a few days as I figured out what was coming next. With a sore right leg from pulling my hamstring I hobbled around trying to get into Nairobi, unfortunately the busses (Matatu’s) went on strike due to some new road laws the Kenyan government was introducing. The laws included a no tolerance on drinking and driving, fines for people driving on sidewalks and acting in an unsafe matter, and placing limits on the amount of people in one vehicle at one time. I think these laws are perfectly fine, but the greedy Matatu drivers decided to close down the entire city center stranding many people for 2 days from being able to get back home or into work on a payday at that – Violence erupted with thieves appearing and dragging people out of busses giving them a good walloping, pulling knives and robbing them of all of their money. It took a few days for things to get back to normal and there seemed to be heavy police presence watching the actions of anyone in the bus stands and on the roads watching out to enforce the new rules and to watch out for unruly people looking to capitalize and cause trouble.

I was pleasantly surprised when I visited the dentist in Nairobi! Having a friend find a decent dentist surely helped – but within 1 hour I had gone through a full checkup, X-Rays, and the dentist fixed my back molar without a crown and also went ahead and sorted out 4 other issues for me with no fuss – smiling when I was asking about some of the grosser things they’ve seen as being a dentist in the villages. It’s required that a dentist spend 2 years in a rural environment working for the government before getting their license. Less than $50 dollars later and cheeks full like a chipmunk I was back on the road smiling again shaking my head at the ordeal that would have cost nearly $1000 in charges in Canada. When I told the dentist the costs for dental work in Canada in a stern face she replied she should likely raise her prices with a small smirk showing through.

The situation doesn’t look good getting into Ethiopia as mentioned in the last post – So I’ve started looking for new things to do – I think my time in Africa is coming to a close – sadly I’d like to continue it but safety is starting to become first in my life, and while I can always come back when things lighten up a bit, and start to come in from the west through Morocco where the visa acquisition is quite a bit easier. Throwing ideas back and forth not sure what would come next I’ve been spending time on the airline websites for destinations that would be suitable for riding in the next couple of months, and I think I’ve nailed it down to Athens, Greece. While it will be cold in January it will eventually warm up as I hope to make it through Eastern Europe, cross into Scandinavia and then back into Western Europe before the cold season hits. It’s certainly do-able – I’ve done basic math that shows it to be 10000km. Based on my performance in the past – I’m likely to deviate and times that estimation by 1.5 based on recommendations from people that I meet, and I’m ok with that – no prolem to get that done in the next year, unless if I pull off a 7 month vacation like I did in 2012. I don’t think I’m done in Africa quite yet – Uganda holds some appeal as does Rwanda and I think I can burn off a few months of cycling in the warm areas rather than freezing in the Northern Hemisphere. I should likely figure out how to get my rain pants and thicker sleeping bag sent over from Vancouver some how.

I took a bus from Nairobi over to Mombasa, the coast of Kenya well known for its beautiful beaches, humidity similar to Dar Es Salaam, but much less populated and wild with monkeys hopping everywhere, Elephants roaming around closeby and a much more smaller vibe – Crime is high here, as most areas with tourism but nothing that I haven’t dealt with before. I plan on spending a week over on the coast before heading back to Nairobi, and riding away slowly hoping not to cause too much damage on my hamstrings, finish off Africa in the next month and then be on my way. I’ve battled back and forth about potential routes and what I could do to stay here – but it’s just not the time. We’ll see what happens though, things change daily. Looking forward to visiting parts of this country and seeing what it has to offer on the road. The riding has made me feel wonderful again and it’s hard to believe that I was away for so long. Just need to sort out a few issues with the electrical system and we’ll be good to go. Anyone want to buy a HTC One X?

Elevation Chart

Better late than never, I’m here to write about a posting I did way back in November 2011 with an idea to make a (small, really small) difference in Africa throughout my travels. In fact the rules of the game changed along the way – Originally I had intended this to be about Children in Zimbabwe, struggling to get past the massive currency devaluation and hyper inflation that occurred in 2007 and 2008 – When I posted this original call out the response was shocking – People around the world wanted to help, and believed in the cause that they’d get something to show for the money donated.  While the entire process was set to be completed in January of 2012 I fell into something known as “Africa Time” and while the plan was still on the books it was delayed by 3 months. When doing the bookkeeping based on the donations I noticed that only 1 of the donations fell into the pre-packaged plans that I had assumed would be popular for donations from my readers, but what actually turned out is that people donated a much different amount, often leaving along a comment of “Whatever you think is best“. And so with that I proceeded into Zimbabwe in April of 2012 wondering how I was going to deal with the massive amount of donations to disperse.

As I traveled through Zimbabwe, I was shocked to see smiling faces, an economy that was certainly struggling, but had brushed off the recent problems and returned to business as usual or business as  best as you can deal with the situation and came to the conclusion that it might be best to split the donations up into 4 pieces for a few reasons – I had no idea of what the upcoming countries situations would be like, My bicycle, already overloaded with necessities for long term travel couldn’t well support the added cargo for the entire amount, and it allowed time for me to reflect on “What is best“. What I didn’t expect was the effort involved in dealing with this embarkment..

1) I have to hand it to everyone here who is a mother, father, or cares for children – This was a whole new world for me walking into a store and trying to find the best value of garments based on quality, price, sizes, and what was printed on them. Especially worse, when it came to the girls section where more often than not I enlisted the help of some of the staff asking them questions if “They would like this if they were a girl”. I attempted to split the genders down the middle, but in most cases I found that due to some of these issues the boys received a little extra attention.

2) Delivering the goods were an all out experience together – Imagine a white man on a bicycle, visibly dirty, stubble and in some cases scraggly growth on the face randomly appearing beside a child who was alone or with a friend trying to quickly communicate with them and make friends – In most cases the children ran off, had the look of fear or massive confusion in their eyes, and half the time I was unable to deliver properly. Throw a language barrier into the mix and uninformed fears of white people being known as “slave traders” caused more frustrations. Sometimes when I’d approach children I’d note their families were near by which made the situation a bit easier to digest. Often, if there were many children around, or if the parents had many kids I’d have to move on, knowing I wouldn’t have the correct size, or clothes for the gender, but sometimes it worked out.

3) I felt weird just stopping and giving clothing and asking for a photograph right away, instead tried my best to make conversations and become friends in some way before I was able to snap a photo, which in some cases put a lot more people in the photograph than expected – not all were able to be gifted with clothing, and I wanted to make sure there was no animosity between peers or families that they were the chosen ones.  Still I managed to get photographs for 85% of the offerings, and I think that’s a pretty good number on this outing.

4) As I traveled into the different countries my mind wandered and realized that sometimes maybe just clothing was the best way, noticing donations from NGO’s and charities lining the streets of the market places, a broken link in the chain of delivery where one person took acceptance of hundreds of garments destined for the people and used it as a business for their own gain. I started to think about other ideas of how to accomplish this fact, and you’ll see as the post goes on were I went with this. It was what I thought was best. I decided as well that pooling the funds togethe into a lump sum and using the buying power of a specific set of funds for each country would work out better than the confusing line by line item of the donations I received, although it is possible for me to send specific photos to each person who donated, it would be simply a series of photos in the order of the donations that were received, the amount that was purchased give or take a photo – I think we are all better off on this approach so thanks are in order.

Thanks to Christopher O,Edith A, Andrew M, Bryan S, Frank P, Karen C, Stacey S, Alan G, Shyla D. for your tremendous support throughout this process. I did my best to mention how this all came about, and wanted to make sure that people knew it wasn’t just a Bicyclist who was involved in the giving, but a group of concerned people from all around the world that wanted to help. With you, I couldn’t have done this, and while there were out of pocket expenses on my end from my own donations the amount you donated far exceeds what I could afford to put in solely.

And now what you’ve all been waiting for – the pictures! A brief description is included of who the children were and what they received accompanies each photo:

Zimbabwe

Full of rolling hills, Zimbabwe offers incredible scenery, warm smiles from everyone who you pass and more often than not someone thanking you for coming to the country to see it with your own eyes, straying from the worlds view of a dangerous and troubled country. In fact, these are some of the happiest people I have ever met, and in talks with locals who suffered through losing absolutely everything they owned mentioned they knew that everything would be OK with patience, and support from their families. I did the purchase of 3 bags of clothing in Masvingo, in between Bulawayo and Mutare, by far one of the most scenic areas I’ve ever visited in the world.

This corn farmer and his 5 children were slightly taken back by a cyclist who randomly appeared and gave them all socks, pants, shirts – I should have had a shirt for the father – it was worn right through on the front! They said it was a miracle, and were now going to start praying for corn for their crops.

This cute little boy got the whole setup – socks, underwear, shorts and shirt.

These two were walking with their mother down the road and were unable to understand any sort of English, luckily mother in the background was able to understand fragments and after some repeat attempts with her trying to figure out how to use my camera we got this one shot.

This boy ran like mad when I pulled up alongside him, but warmed up when I gave him an extra pair of underwear and socks that would fit him.

With a bowing of the head and two claps this mother was grateful for the clothes for her two children at the end of a long day of riding.

Mozambique

Struggling still after a 15 year civil war, Mozambique has some potential for its economy to grow after a discovery of Natural Gas and Coal in the Northern region. A huge push by the European Union, US Aid and other NGOs to get infrastructure suitable for travel across the large country is in effect, road conditions are certainly the poorest I’ve ever seen, prices are through the roof for everything from a loaf of bread to clothing to gas which trickled down to the people, where I purchased instead of just clothing but Bags that could be used for carrying things to and from school, each with a notepad of paper, and a pen – Sometimes children received clothing as well as the bag, all based on the situation at that moment.

Heading on the way to school I couldn’t help but notice the boy carrying a huge pile of books in his hand. Now it looks much easier to carry – and he’ll have a new notepad and pen to write with, along with a new shirt for tomorrow.

As above, this young girl took possession of a new bag along with a one piece dress.

While collecting water I found this little girl who was wearing torn clothes, and found that this dress would fit her suitably. She was ecstatic.

Both of these girls and were thankful for the bags and dresses here posing with their mother and father.

A new pair of shorts and shirt for this 10 year old will hopefully service him well.

This boy received a bag and a pair of shorts as he walks 4km to school and back everyday.

Malawi

This little girl might not remember me, but the family will certainly remember the outfit for her.

Surprising the entire family by appearing, 7 kids and 2 mothers were well equipped with shorts, shirts,dresses, and wraps.

Again, a crowd to hide the actual intended photo subject – a wrap and an outfit was donated for this stop.

3 children were clothed from this stop at the side of the road, alongside the bicycle with the huge bag of clothing hanging off the top.

I still have one more country to do. More to come..

Wow – has it been 5 months since I’ve been cycling, I’m afraid so. I took some well deserved me time over the past few months, and just now getting ready to hit the road for some more adventures. I’m alive, well, and writing this from Arusha, Tanzania where I left my bicycle all the way back in June. What was originally intended to be a brief trip back to Zambia to get my health back up in order morphed into a whole new set of adventures. Jammed between making new friends in Zambia, some very sad goodbyes (it doesn’t get any easier the more times you do it) and some great memories forged along with future plans in place it’s going to be interesting if I find myself back in that country – Will I go for a three-peat? Even though I had some pretty scalding things to say about the sweeping governmental changes happening in the country it still doesn’t change the fact that it’s a beautiful place, the people are the friendliest people I’ve ever met, and the beer – oh that Mosi Beer!

Kenneth Kaunda and myself – Zambia’s First President 1964-1991

Definitely the highlight in the past few months was having dinner with Kenneth Kaunda – Zambia’s first president in power from 1964 all the way up until1991 – Regarded as one of Africa’s great leaders, he’s still able bodied, and full of humor. He seems to think that I’m crazy for riding my bicycle around the world. He’s right. Listen to the leader. Sadly, his wife passed away a few weeks after we met from a stroke – So the fellow is probably feeling quite lonely since they had been married for over . Let’s hope he can stave away the lonesomeness and continue to be around for a while longer. At 88 he’s already bending the rules for life expectancy, but it seems that many of the original leaders (Mugabe) are going strong as well at similar ages. What’s their secret?

I’m also very grateful for my contact in Zambia who travels back and forth to Canada frequently. With his help I was able to replace my stolen knives, and stock up on a few more bicycle parts and even received a nice small knife / money clip in the mail from a reader – very cool. I also took it upon myself knowing that my electronics were starting to grow old to upgrade my laptop and my telephone. The IPhone 4 that I had still sells for a ridiculous amount of money in Zambia ($800!) and it just made sense to purchase something new with warranty for cheaper than that – So I picked up an HTC One X – using the Android Operating System. It’s a ridiculously powerful phone – 4 cores running at 1.6ghz – 1 GB of RAM, 32 GB of Storage, 8mp Camera, and a high definition display. It’s a joy to use, but the battery life isn’t so hot on it and I’ve been tinkering underneath the hood with development code to stretch more juice out of it, and have even gone as far as under clocking the device to maximize the juice. It remains yet to be seen how this is going to work on when tour as I find I charges quite slow as well. Certainly will never go back to an Apple product ever again.

On the computer front I was able to unload my laptop (Acer 1830T) for the same price I picked it up 2 years earlier, so it was a no brainer to pick up something and have it brought over to Zambia. I scaled up a bit higher moving from a 11.6” screen size to a 13.3” screen size but still half a pound less than what the Acer was. I’m now using an Asus UX32VD w/10GB ram and 512GB SSD drive – completely silent, this thing runs circles around any other computer I’ve used – and has no hiccups when I’ve pushed it to the limits with video editing and programming thanks to the Core I7 processor and a 1GB dedicated video card inside of it. Now this thing I’m happy with.

I’m also the frustrated owner of another Garmin Edge 705 GPS – We’ll get to that later and I might even try to convince you, the reader, that you need one as it makes no sense for me to carry two

I left Zambia in early October heading to Dar Es’ Salaam, Tanzania to return to where my bicycle was stored, meeting a fantastic couple who worked for a countries foreign affairs department, and the husband a talented photographer, author, and into film recordings. I spent some time with them, while at the same time finally running into Shane who had been cycling around Africa since about the same time I have although we’ve missed each other in so many different countries. Sadly, he’s thrown in the towel for Africa and is now back at home in colder climates planning something different. When all of the meetings and greetings were done it turned into one more trip to the Dar Es’ Salaam airport, this time with some new friends who were travelling Eastern Africa to greet my first visitor to go out of their way and fly halfway across the world to come and see what Africa was like. It’s nice and all to meet people every day, but sometimes you just want to stop and recall a funny story with someone you have spent time with for more than 20 minutes/1 day that sort of thing. All the way from Newfoundland where I spent the winter of 2010 to Africa is quite the shift, but similar in some of the ways – Pineapple soda drinks being one, Strange languages being the other, probably some other things too. I don’t care so much for Dar Es’ Salaam so we hightailed it over the ferry terminal to go to the Island of Zanzibar, visiting Stone Town a myriad of buildings pieced together creating a twisted maze with extensive history going back hundreds of years. Zanzibar, known for its spices, its white sand beaches, but also some dark history, such as slave trading.

Politically Zanzibar is looking to separate from the country of Tanzania, and a battle is looming over it in the next few years – With 99% of the population Muslim it’s quite the experience compared to other regions of Africa. Your early morning wake up call at 5am happens with the call to Mecca and throughout the day – Earplugs essential, and there seems to be some tensions between the people. Where there is normally 30,000 people in a crowded market full of butchers, vegetable sellers, street vendors, busses, dala dalas, taxis it quickly emptied out as a group of people who were upset with one of their leaders being arrested bombed the city, started things on fire, barricading roads with trees and rocks, and burning tires. Naturally this sent people fleeing to try to get out of the way of fighting, not to mention the police who appeared in riot gear around the city with tear gas guns and other weapons of force to break up the fighting. Let’s just say a lot of people stayed indoors that night. Zanzibar has some charm to it, especially the spices such as Cinnamon, Clove, Coriander, Peppers, and iodine which grow in the middle of the island, the beaches are nice without too many people hassling you, but I think there are better places in this world to go and visit. It was nice, but I felt better connected to other areas.

After vising it was time to do some travel by public transport instead of on the bicycle – so off I went with only one backpack (instead of 6 bike bags, and I still had more than I needed) trying my luck at hitchhiking all the way up to Arusha, going past Moshi where Africa’s highest mountain (Kilimanjaro) resides. You can take an express bus from Dar Es’ Salaam and it will arrive within 12 hours (it’s only 680km why so long! I’ve seen how fast these bus drivers move!) but just for fun I figured why not take the local bus transport from city to city, often costing 75 cents at a time, and seeing where the day ended. After Day 2, I was done with that and vowed never to do that again. You see these busses are actually just small vans suitable for 8 people, yet they manage to fit 22 inside of them like a twisted game of Tetris. People leaning over top of you, armpit in your face, babies crying, chickens squawking, a 50lb bag of sardines in the middle as cargo with the bus driver stopping and starting picking up more and more people, letting a few people off, lather, rinse,repeat. Crushed up against the body of another person creates some fairly intimate moments, but certainly the bus driver and his assistant hollering cancels out any sort of dirty thoughts – instead forcing you to think about getting off this damn thing.

Arriving in cities by backpack was certainly different than showing up by bicycle. Bicycle I’m sweaty, all jacked up with energy and look like a crazy madman with one goal – looking for a beer. Most people are taken back, confused, and I seem to have the upper hand in conversations and communication leading to little to no hassles, other than the curious people wondering what actually is going on. On a backpack, I show up – sweaty, stinking like someone else’s armpit, with no energy, with one goal – looking for a beer. Good luck finding one without people coming up to you and hassling you to buy, sell, ride in a taxi, go here, do this, and all sorts of other things in languages you’ll never once in your life understand. The tourist has arrived and the thieves circle around like vultures watching your every move – the young girls when you pass them break out in laughter, and echoes of ‘Mzungu! Mzungu!’ follow you the entire journey by foot around the cities. The shop keepers blatantly rip you off much worse than it would be if I arrived in by cycle. It was interesting – Walking’s the pits though – Blisters and frustrations with my feet caused some fairly painful moments, of course not being able to have the full benefit of my first aid kit with creams, lotions, potions, and bandages. Having to find a place to live every night in a guesthouse also proved to be frustrating, not to mention the morning coffee. I’m so used to stopping in the bush, setting up the tent and settling off to sleep, but in most cases it was a scramble to find something before dark as Africa by day is one thing, but by night it’s a completely different beast.

When in Arusha I managed to hook up with someone to take me to Ngorogoro Crater on a Safari. Yup – sitting in the back of a Land Cruiser staring at animals – sounds great, and it was neat to see everything they said I would see such as Giraffe, Lions, Rhino, Leopards, Wildebeest and Zebra – but there’s something that feels wrong about just sitting and staring just so everyone else in the car can pull out their camera and take a photo. I’d much rather go to a watering hole and wait for the animals to come in on their own rather than chasing it. I couldn’t last more than one day doing this so it was back to Arusha before heading into Kenya, a country which I still haven’t cycled yet into the wild and crazy town of Nairobi. It’s bigger than Dar Es’ Salaam and has a pretty sinister reputation as one of the most dangerous cities out there (Nairobbery) but in the past 5 years things have cleaned up considerably, and while the traffic is chaotic (worse than Dar Es’ Salaam maybe?) it’s a pretty fine tuned city with some absurd rules such as no smoking in public. Oh, I guess I should mention that I did end up quitting smoking again in August, but found myself sucking on the dried leaf again in October during my backpacking travels. As soon as I found myself alone again I put the stinky butts out – let’s see if I can keep it together for longer now – if we’re counting it’s been 5 month smoking, 5 months not this year – so.. let’s see if I can make it a bit more uneven. I don’t want to smoke the damn things, just find myself in situations (stress) where I feel like it’s the right (beer) thing to do (lots of people).

The Wildebeasts of Ngorogoro Crater

The Wildebeasts of Ngorogoro Crater

The Lion (Male) and In heat Lion (Female) of Ngorogoro Crater

The Zebras of Ngorogoro Crater

The Turtles of – wait, what?

I only wanted to do one thing in Nairobi, and it involved animals – instead of seeing them walking around in their habitat – I wanted to see them on my plate. Carnivore is located in the countries capital in a private setting and offers something I’ve never seen in Africa – All you can Eat – not only that it’s all you can eat MEAT!. Eating chicken and chips from roadside stand is great and all, but the $30 it cost to load up on all different types of meat including some wild game meat certainly made it all worthwhile. The Ox Balls however didn’t quite fascinate me, although it is not the first time I’ve eaten testicles or tried weird animal offerings – I still maintain eating pigs brains in New Orleans (2011) was the best thing I’ve ever eaten in my life.

Not quite sure what came after Nairobi, the idea was to head to Kampala Uganda, continue the hellish bus rides, searching for guest houses and not staying in one place for more than a day – but instead decided that taking it easy was the way to go, which found a ticket from Nairobi to Lilongwe, Malawi in my hands – but not before I was able to visit Hell’s Gate National Park just outside of Nairobi, a scenic area where one can actually ride their bike through amongst the animals, climb mountains, and take a long hike through the gorge. I hope to visit again when I cross into Kenya by bicycle as the ones they had for rent left a bit to be desired – no brakes, no pedals, bad tires and rims. Perhaps a few nights camping exploring the area is in order provoking some thoughts about what’s to come in the future might be just what I’m after – my body is going to be screaming again after putting it through the trials of 100km days after sitting on my fat ass for the past 5 months.

Hell’s Gate National Park, Kenya

Malawi – the pictures weren’t taken as often as I had in other places. I’ve been there before, had a great time and wanted to see if the magic was still there. It is, along with some frustrations on supplies – their currency is tanking against the USD so it’s still a wonderful place for travellers. Coca Cola’s now down to 25 cents a bottle, beer 60 cents, but things like gas have shot up to almost $2 a litre. Still, some hectic bus rides took me back to Cape Maclear (also known as the village of Chembe) where I’d have to say the best sunsets and sunrises occur on that lake, paired with a relaxing vibe filled with Rasta’s, no police, and cheap food and lodging – I stayed again at the Malambe lodge where for a whopping $3 a night you could stay in a private hut. Relaxation is what I was after, and I got it – Some headstands got involved (likely due to the fact that I also found myself drinking this hideous stuff as seen below – It’s a 30ml plastic sachet of liquor that you can buy for 1 cent. It knocks you on your ass hard, no matter which type out of the 8 available you drink – sadly the kids are also into it as well, and this isn’t doing much good for their hopes and aspirations). I also found myself again back in Nkhata Bay, again jumping in the Lake where I picked up Bilharzia last time, running into yet another cyclist who I’ve been communicating with for over 3 years – Loretta – She’s been in Malawi for a few months waiting for bicycle parts to arrive – unfortunately when they did arrive they were the wrong ones. I have those parts in my spare kit, but since my bicycle was all the way in Arusha I sadly could not help. She’s heading south still, eventually when the parts make it there. Mail service can be incredibly dicey.

One last go at torture found me this time waling up the 10km stretch of Gorode, to the town of Livingstonia stopping at the fabulous in the woods Mushroom Farm Lodge. Sadly I missed the owner by a day, as he threw in the towel for Malawi and decided to move to the United Kingdom. This time instead of camping I opted for a room – with some breathtaking views of the start of the great Rift Valley, watching in darkness as it looked like lava flowing up and down the hills as the farmers burned their fields to prepare for the upcoming rainy season. Sadly all time comes to an end, and in 2 days from leaving the lodge I found myself back in Dar Es’ Salaam running on no sleep waving goodbye feeling a bit teary eyed that I was once again alone and on my own in this wild continent. I made my way back over to my friends, did some laundry, hung out at the Dar Yacht Club and worked on a few projects that I’ve been meaning to get started on for a few days before heading back up to Arusha. Which brings me to right here. Right now. There’s a few things that have changed – for the best? I’m now going to cut my hair every week. I’m also going to shave my face once a week. Big changes huh! Well, I tried to grow my hair out since May of this year, and sadly – there’s just not that much hair growing anymore! What is has now shifted to greyer colours – and I look like a bulls eye to a bird flying above. Its funny, just when you want to grow hair after having no hair for more than half your life, you can’t – There’s always wigs like the African ladies do I suppose? Same with the beard. Yup, it’s brown, but now it’s grey as well – so the new plan is look younger, and don’t look like a scuzzy bum with unkempt hair. This should be the easy one to solve.

Next – I’ve got to start eating better, the last time I was cycling I was struggling with the Peanut Butter Sandwiches, and the Spaghetti every night for dinner. I need to put some more variety into my diets, and the eat so much of one food until you want to throw up from it never to eat it again approach isn’t working as the number of those foods on that list is rapidly growing. I’m also ready to start buying water if I have to. Previously I’ve been a stubborn asshole and tried to do it the way the “locals” do it. After the nasty sicknesses I went through in June which lingered all the way into mid August I’ve got to make sure my health comes first and foremost, rather than trying to have the “experience”. You’ve read the book/watched the movie Into the Wild. I’m not gong out like that.

After that, I’m no longer interested in doing 100km a day as a rule. If it happens, it happens, but I can’t keep pushing myself. I became miserable in June from the steady climbs and bad roads paired with sickness, bad food and water. It wasn’t fun, and it had me throwing around the idea of just quitting the bike riding and doing something else. I don’t want that to happen. I’m itching to travel again by bicycle – certainly choose the bicycle over plane, auto, public transport – that has been firmly reinforced based on the past few months of foot travel. Stop when I’m tired, take it easy. My health is more important – aches and pains I need to deal with right away. This whole nagging in my left testicle thing is starting to piss me off – It was gone from August – September – October – On the ride back into Arusha it started bothering me again. Is it stress? Is It Nerves? The idea was to go up to Europe and lob it off – No doctors can tell me what exactly is wrong with it, and any x-rays, ultrasounds, and other tests have shown nothing. Shane in Dar Es’ Salaam mentioned that there is a possibly for doctors to stick needles into nerves to see if it turns off the pain receptor – sometimes it can go all “nutty” and send false pain prompts to the brain. The hope is that they find the right nerve and then cauterize the end of it. It sounds like a reasonable approach as this seems to be stress or subconscious related, other than it being painful. Thankfully I’ve got a couple thousand painkillers with me that I’ll munch on until I can get to an area where I trust the medical system a bit more.

Finally is the last thought that’s running through my mind – Where do I go from here? When I was in Zambia I decided that it might me best to see something different, prompting some investigation into heading north into Ethiopia, Sudan, Egypt before heading into Israel, Jordan, Lebanon. Well – I’m in Africa and I’m not getting good internet, and I can honestly say all of those areas have their fuses lit right now with a huge bang about to happen. I’d be crazy to go into Israel or Lebanon at this point in time, and other travellers stories of cycling through Ethiopia with its crazy graded hills, extreme heat and the little bonus of children throwing rocks at you paired with adults throwing sticks in between your spokes as you descend hills doesn’t sound appealing to me. Taking a ferry from Djibouti into Yemen was also a good possibility, but the Middle East is very touchy – it seems 3 months ago things were good, but there’s no chance in it getting better any time soon. Which leaves me to the original plan, cycling through the west of Africa, meaning going through Rwanda, DRC Congo, Nigeria and countries like Sierra Leone – I don’t think I have the tolerance and guts to pull it off any more – thinking that a bit of structure, tarred roads, and breathtaking scenery where I am not having to fight for my life every single day might restore my desire to cycle and travel more. While I want to visit those countries, Rwanda, Congo and Uganda are now getting quite hot headed with each other, and who knows what’s to come in the west with Mali, Liberia, and Burkina Faso.

Here’s my ultimate goal – Be in London for Christmas 2013/2014 so that I can leave my bicycle for the winter, travel back to Canada, see my family and friends – snowboard the season and resume at that time. If I have the nerve to finish Africa at that time from the West I can, or I can keep heading east into India and far east Asia. Sure that’s a ways a way, but what I need to figure out is how I’m going to spend the winter – Europe in the Winter is the least exciting thing possible in my mind at present as I’m desperate to ride again, any more sitting and I’m about to explode. Perhaps you, the reader can give some hints on where I should go? Cyprus? Spain? Fly to Tunisia and take a ferry to Italy? Greece? Somewhere mild, not too hot, not too cold – nice views, and a healthy selection of beers would be ideal.  I figure I’ll have some time on my hands to think about how I’m going to do things as I set forth again leaving Tanzania for the last time on this bicycle journey and heading North into Kenya, stopping in Nairobi where I have to search out a dentist to fix a cracked tooth. It’s also a hub for some airlines, not to mention many embassies reside – so I can make up my mind on what I want to do. And hey, there’s always Zambia again..

Now – I’m ready to go, the bicycle is in tip top condition thanks to some help from ER in Arusha with getting my pedal bearings regreased, I’ve given the bike a test ride and while it feels weird to ride again, it will stand up to the next bit without issues, I have enough spare chains to last another 30,000 kilometres, spare tubes and tires and the only possible thing that could go wrong is my panniers lose all the contents – they are getting old and filled with holes. I’m holding off on getting new ones at present just due to the shipping situation – I also have a roll of duct tape in case things get crazy.  I do however have this problem of 2 Garmin GPS’s. I’ve been using the Garmin since I left in 2009 to track my daily distance, calories burned, elevation asc/descent, and some direction following thanks to its ability to load maps from Garmin themselves, or Tracks4Africa, or OpenStretMap at no cost. It’s good for two 8 hour days of riding before the battery makes motions of wanting a recharge, and syncs up with a computer to give you detailed stats and map of where you’ve travelled. It’s waterproof as well. I thought I lost mine when I was travelling by backpack, frantically ordering another one from the USA so I could continue with my stats logging. Low and Behold, it was hiding in some of my stuff back in Dar Es’ Salaam. So now I have two. The old one, has seen some crazy days. I’ve covered the sides in glue to assist in its waterproofing as I was wearing the buttons pretty hard, not all the way through, but enough to warrant paranoia. The screen has a small scuff on it – but I was sort of figuring that I’d send it back to Garmin for their $125 repair fee for a brand new one when it finally gave up the ghost. This new one I bought was $285 plus a $72 kick in the ass by Tanzanian Customs – still cheaper than what they cost in bike stores in USA, Canada and Europe. So does any of you want one of these? Would sell the new one of course at cost ($357 and the used one for $150. The used one could be turned into a brand new one for an extra fee if you so wanted – all entirely up to you. I’ve never used the brand new one, other than a full charge, and it is safely rewrapped in its protective bags along with the charging cable, and bike mount. Heck, if you bought the used one I’d even send you all the other brand new parts that came with the new one as I already have the worn out components that I’m comfortable with using. It’s a great unit, robust and great for getting you in and out of travel binds without the frustration of constantly worrying about your batteries as with the GPSes on the phone. You can even use a Heart Rate monitor and a sensor on your pedals to track your Beats Per Minute, and Cadence when cycling, apparently turning you into a better cyclist. I don’t want to be a great cyclist – I just want to see the world.  I can ship to you wherever you are in the world. Or, would consider trades, shoes, boots, merino wool shirts, maybe electronics – who knows. Contact me.

So, let’s see what happens in the weeks to come, sorry for the silence, now back to our regularly scheduled programming… Hope you enjoy the newly rewritten, and optimized website. It should display correctly on all phones, browsers, and not to mention the statistics/gear/content pages are much easier for me to update now.

Wow – already 6 weeks off the bicycle, time flies when you are busy recuperating, back in a safe zone which I desperately needed to restore some balance to my body, and mind. Not to say it’s all sorted out yet, but having a private space to call home for a bit has really helped – After going for this long I’m starting to see the dark parts of long term travel – Things as little as a Clean pillowcase to change if you slobbered all over your own, or even an extra pillow if you wanted to prop yourself up a bit more while reading – little things – of course I could rattle on for a few paragraphs of the other things but I’m sure you get the point. Even just a conversation is needed regularly and sometimes those don’t exist – long term this can make you flat out lonely if you don’t have the right people to bounce things off of.

Zambia also has seen some major changes since I left, and it seems the shining country which I loved so much is starting to struggle with some powers that be in the office – The USD has been taken out of any sort of currency transactions here, in an attempt to raise the value of the Zambian Kwacha (ZMK), in preparation for the removal of 3 0’s (think 5000 ZMK which is worth about 1.10 USD at present will now be 5 ZMK) sometime in the next few months. This is going to have major impact on the prices of goods, with most retailers raising the prices to round things off as they don’t want to deal with the hassle of coins. A mandatory minimum wage increase was forced down the throats of business owners resulting in many businesses laying off 30% of their staff immediately due to the way that the law was brought in and at such a rapid pace. This causes prices to rise in itself and massive inflation as retailers raise their goods and services prices to keep their existing staff on board and still try to make a profit, but often the prices are higher than the actual raise in salary comparison – not to mention the huge spike in unemployment. What could possibly come next? Price fixing? Wait – the census bureau is now visiting businesses demanding to look at prior years of books to find out how much profit is being made on products – Other henchmen seem to be appearing in places with measuring tape wanting to implement new property tax rules, and it seems the government is slipping back into a corrupt situation along with the rest of the authority positions here – If you can believe it, the Zambian Police showed on their books $0 income for the year of 2011 from fines and tickets – It seems that if you are caught doing something (that is supposedly wrong, or actually is) you can drift enough for some lunch and a beer over to the officer and you are off on your way – but if you wanted to follow the books and get a receipt for the fine by going down the station (and actually paying the full price often 20x higher) – it still manages to disappear but at a higher level. An amazing show of greed from the ones out to protect people.  The biggest debacle is the rules that are so grey and wide open to interpretation, such as the new law stating that everyone is entitled to follow their own religion, with the next clause being that as long as it isn’t anti-christian – or my favorite – No smoking in public places, with no definition of a public place. I actually was dealing with some business downtown a few weeks back and hopped into a car of a friend and lit up a cigarette in my hand while sitting inside with the door ajar. A man walked up to me and started talking to me – I initially brushed him off figuring he was out to shake me out of some money and ignored him, until he pulled out a folded copy of the bylaw from his pocket standing upright alongside his newly appeared cronie. They demanded the equivalent of $450 USD or told me that I was to be sentenced to 2 years in jail for smoking in a public place. Thoroughly frustrated at the situation I put on the dumb act, had them read each line of all 3 pages out to me, often with my commentary of “What does this mean? I don’t understand!? Can you explain?” until they finally spoke to each other privately coming back to me explaining that the matter was in my hands – and after that I could be let off scott free. I promptly got out of the car, shook their hands hopped back in, slammed the door and we drove off. I’m sure they won’t be saying that line in the future! Out of this all though, this country is starting to get ridiculous in an obvious attempt to squeeze residents and foriegners out of their money. Same old tricks as older governments, different ways.

A highlight of the past month was taking receipt of a suitcase brought over to me from Canada carrying some replacement parts and clothing that I had picked up, but a handful of letters, postcards, funny gifts, and a ridiculous amount of painkillers that someone figured I could use over here. Some people that I’ve never met in person but I have communicated with over the past little bit – readers of the site, friends of friends, passer-by’s – My call for a little pick me up was heard loud and clear, and I still have a smile on my face from that day reading them all – they are posted where I stay at present and will be put into safe keeping come when it’s time to move on forward with the bicycle again.

I haven’t been doing a heck of a lot to be honest since arriving – Other than being able to see older friends, I’ve also had the opportunity to make some new friends, mostly through travellers networks as I haven’t been venturing out much more so in ‘hermit’ mode. With these people I now see it the way that some people see me, a great opportunity to build upon long lasting friendships,  that is until its time for them to go back to their country, or continue their travels – starting to wear thin a bit. Luckily I have a few Zambian friends who while confused at my overall way of living and mindset sometimes still manage to continue to put their end of the friendship effort in which is nice to see.

I do think I trust too much however – A few weeks back it finally happened – I had some things stolen from me, my two knives which are essentially a part of me were taken from inside my little shack that I stay in one late night when I invited someone back for some late night beers until the sun would rise. I couldn’t make it until daylight and just told them they could see themselves out at daylight only to wake up and find them gone. It’s funny, in the past month as well I’ve taken a major hit on my finances upsetting some future travel plans a bit, but it seems to be the knives that are bothering me the most – simply because it was something I actually touched, felt, and used on a daily basis – and maybe that it was taken by someone who I thought I could trust. Not trying to let it get to me as I like giving the benefit of the doubt to people but I’ll always remember it going forward, as I’m unable to get the exact same Spyder Co Manix Mini knife as it’s well out of production and highly sought after by Knive lovers. The Leatherman Wave Multi Tool can be replaced, but still needs to gain its soul only after long amounts of usage. Like a lighter however that one holds onto for a year and loses it, the next few lighters immediately disappear and the magic and care one first took to make sure the original one was always around seems to dissipate, so I wouldn’t be surprised if I am able to find replacements and that they disappear soon after as well. Just a thought.

Books, Music, Movies, and even watching bad TV has been getting me through the mornings where I still wake up at 5am come daylight – far too early to be shuffling about  – all helping to reset the brain and get well again from May and Junes disastrous times – My weight is back up, people no longer tell me that there looks like there is something wrong with me and my colour is back to normal – my voice is completely scratchy though still, even after kicking the smoking habit which I started back up in Mozambique again. Seriously, this is tougher than I thought – enough already – Once quitting the first week I couldn’t swallow whatsoever while my throat regenerated tissue – I suppose I wasn’t always coughing up phlegm to keep it moisturized, and even now weeks later after quitting I come up with random colds, congestion, and coughs out of the blue – making me wonder how long this is going to go on for, and if there is something else lurking – My body hasn’t quite been the same since Malawi, and all out pain is back in the nether regions – After years of abuse from riding, slipping, and perhaps even getting kicked waaaay back when I’ve decided that once I get into more friendlier Medicare territory to undergo surgery to have one of my testicles removed that seems to give problems for no apparent reason, even after repeat visits to doctors along with x-rays, ultrasounds, and other “exploratory” measures. Enough is enough.

I’m also wondering as to what’s next in the traveling after this break is over. I’ll be honest – the last time leaving from Zambia really took a lot out of me and made me realize that I was starting to miss some of the more important things in life – When the families I knew passed by me on that holiday weekend stopping at the side of the road wishing me good luck and expressing sadness that I was leaving started to bring up some desires to get some stability and normality – It’s funny – grass is always greener on the other side isn’t it! Not happy with your working-to-the-bone life so you take control entirely and be 100% free, but then down the road you begin to realize that some of those components are actually good for you – Read the ‘About’ Page one more time that was written way back when this website started, I suppose I ‘m reaching the phase where I’m interested in the ‘balance’ mode using the skills and knowledge I’ve learned after moving from one end to the other of the spectrum. Does that mean stopping? I don’t know. Does it mean settling with a partner in a location? I don’t know. I don’t know what anything means right now, but have decided that I won’t push myself much further if I start to go through the problems I did in months past. I’ve got a choice – Head North through Kenya and Sudan (which is actually a no go due to war at present), or Head West into Congo (which again seems to be a no go) both with the ultimate destination of Europe, and a bit of structure. Not to say that it’s what I exactly want, and could make me just up and quit my tour entirely but it seems like a good plan right now to start looking for some sort of goal after meandering about with no commitment whatsoever. Where ? When ? Why? What ? Who ? All seem to apply and swim around my head. I seem to be at a turning point yet again, highly coincidental seeing as I just found some old writing that I wrote publicly even before this website was running, heck – even before I even knew I would be riding a bicycle again – 4 years ago today at August 15, 2008. It’s an interesting read in my mind to see where I was, and where I am now. Am I happy? Yup. Was it worth it? Sure. I did everything I needed to to get out of a state of chaos that I managed to fall into, and although I didn’t expect some of the fallout that came from people and things around me, I still managed to plug through and make it to even start the trek outwards finally ending up here. It’s not the end for sure, but for certain there will be the inevitable change, and likely with that the approach may be a bit different just as evolution occurs. See you back here in a few weeks.

Ain’t going out like that.

by Dave Conroy on Saturday, August 16, 2008 at 2:26am ·

 

Many of you know I work from home and stare at a screen for at least 1/3 of my waking life for something that i call a career. The mass amounts of information, media, and data that I subject myself to on a daily basis is immense. They say the human brain stores the equivalent of about 10 tb of data before overload occurs and things start to go missing.

I’ve noticed in the past few years, whether it be my late nite wide eyed escapades, food consumption, or just plain out laziness and not pushing myself to achieve any goals that I’m starting to lose things, and starting to notice minute changes in my body. Some are visual, by the fact that I’ve gained close to 20lbs in the past year and a half from working from home (17 steps to your desk does its tolls on you), to mental, understanding how my body reacts to different things such as specific amounts of sleep, different reactions to various foods, herbs, drinks, and other consumables.

Somewhere in the middle of June I ran into the third person I know who is under 40 who recently suffered a heart attack, or a stroke. This is pretty alarming news. One could be classified as fairly sedentary, and one middle of the road, while the other fairly active yet suffering from immense amounts of stress.

I started to lose sleep earlier on this year where it forced me to start wearing earplugs, medicating myself, and sleeping in a separate / sealed room from anyone else. Other things were falling apart in my life, and I was starting to see old health problems creep up again. I made the decision while on a vacation in April that I was going to set some goals. One of those goals was to focus on myself. See, I spent my 20s-30s really have a great time, yet almost coasting. Little to no effort required at doing things, as generally if I do something I pick it up without issue. Little was done to maintain myself however.
I told myself that I was going to focus on myself, which meant a lot of thinking about past experiences, empty promises I had made, and vanished goals. I started by getting rid of my TV. Now, I’m not a barbarian who shouldn’t be watching TV – I actually like watching the odd movie or Torrent, but I found its gratification was so short, and realized that I needed to try something different. Whether it stays this way is unknown, but at least till I sell my house and move into another place, wherever that may be. Instead I started reading. I used to have my nose in books before I started gluing myself to the computer – reading adult books at very young ages, continuously seeking more knowledge (those who know me, know that this is nothing new, the ocd/quest for reverse engineering everything has existed from day one). I plan to read 100 books before the year is done – no not speed reading, but a good mixture of novels, fiction, and education. I’m doing quite well in my goal so far while garnering valuable knowledge for hobbies that I’ve always been interested in but just never had the understanding on ‘where to start’.

The next phase was to get some exercise. This is a no brainer. I can’t sleep because my mind races at night from all the days stresses, so logically it means that I am not tired yet. We’ve got a little piddly gym in our complex that I started testing myself and monitoring how far I would ride a bike and doing basic strength training. I hated it. I last did a lot of strength training in the 90s when I had a lot of spare time on my hands and had some great results, but in those days it was more about looking cool. I kept plugging away though until I got to the point where my body wanted this exercise on a daily basis. Rewind a bit here – I’m not entirely a fat blob, I have a fairly good physique, scuba dive, snowboard and do other active things such as swimming, hiking etc. – but nothing on a regular basis.

At the same time I was figuring out the basics of exercise I did considerable reading about nutrition, what our body needs (craves) and what is not good for it. This is not rocket science, many other people understand the same concepts, it just seems that I was late to the party and had some goofy sunglasses on ignoring it all. I started counting the calories, monitoring the percentages of protein vs. fat vs. carbs I was putting into my body and the evidence was damning. I was eating crap! I read a report that said the average Canadian is eating over 4400 calories per day, while the majority of this food had little to no nutrients, other than the fact it was edible and provided an energy boost. So I bought a scale and started designing a small diet for myself. I tried to get other people to come along for the ride, but realized it was far too much work to introduce others into my personal goals, so decided that I’d let the results do the talking.

It’s now a month and a half after I started getting onboard with the daily exercise, and proper eating habits. It’s a bit of a pain in the ass as is everything at first, but I have gotten to the point where I enjoy it! Gym every day (I’ve since gotten a pass at the Surrey Parks Board which gives me unlimited access to any of their facilities, bonus is that I get it subsidized by my work) and setting personal eating goals. I have some fitness goals that I’m looking to achieve and as it stands I don’t think I’ll have any problem meeting those goals.

I’ve already received a bit of flak from this “shift” – comments from people saying this is just one of my fads and that I’m wishy washy with commitments, lack focus on past interests or just flat out generally comments from other people that almost are determined to see me fail. quite frustrating to hear other peoples views about you, however just shows true colours that people fly. I’ve gotten this far in life and tend to think i made the right decisions along the lines to get this far – but at the end of it all – I’m the one who lives in my head and know what i need to do to get by in life and not going to let other peoples views and talk bother me. lettem chatter.

this isn’t a wow look at me attention post, normally i tend to keep to myself and just live my life but figured I’d write this and release where my heads at now a days. i’ve been thinking about where i need to be in the next few years and these are my plans and goals that i need to follow. while this isn’t going to fix all my issues and there still is day to day mindfuckeries and other things that are affecting me from other angles, but at least I’m able to proceed with a clear head now rather than getting stressed out, freak out and not sleep. I can see the changes all the way around, with my communication, with my general outlook on life, physique, my radio show is kicking ass and has lots of fresh ideas, and my creativity is coming back. something that’s been faltering since about 2003.
these next few months pose to be fairly critical and things could change rapidly on multiple fronts. maybe will post an update in 6.