Saturday’s ride was a success! The track I made on Google Earth kept me out of trouble, except for two wrong turns…comically, both of which were before I even reached the dirt.

Road and weather conditions were near-perfect. Very soon after leaving the town of Ngong, the tarmac ended, however the dirt road was in great condition. Dropping over the edge of the Rift’s escarpment, the descent is relatively steep, and I shortly had to unzip all the vents on my riding jacket — the air quickly lost its coolness. I had the dirt road to myself, only seeing one lorry for the next 80 kilometers that was laboring its way through this rough area. The reddish earth of the dirt road provided a great contrast as it wound through the olive-green of the scrubby bushes and acacia trees. Many rocky upthrusts punctuated the hillsides. I found the [mostly] dry riverbed that became my route for the second half of the trip. Against my hopes, it was actually more of a track than I wanted, so bushwhacking will have be for another excursion. It was very fun, though, following the contours of the land, just as the river runs. It must have rained the day before, as I ran into a bit of mud, which provided some maneuvering excitement. I crossed paths with several Maasai herdsmen with their cattle. Each of them carried a spear, one item of protection against the lions, I imagine. They were friendly enough, waving and smiling as I zig-zagged amidst their bovine. I also encountered quite a few gazelle and antelope that sprinted and lept as I motored by. I came within 20 meters of a herd of zebra that stared at me, their heads swinging in unison to follow me.

Here are some general trip stats:
Trip Distance: 103 kms
Moving Time: 2hrs 27min
Moving Average: 41.7 kph
Max Speed: 83.3 kph

This is the elevation profile of the trip:

Next weekend will bring more adventure. I hope to be taking a longer ride (three days) with a group of friends and heading to a part of the country where I’ve never been.

I am estimating because, for one, I’ve never been through this area. There is no road as far as I can tell. Using Google Earth, I managed to place waypoints along what appear to be animal paths between watering holes and dry riverbeds. I have uploaded these waypoints to my gps, creating a route, which will be my guiding source on this excursion. I probably should download a dose of common sense for this trip, too.

It should be a beautiful ride through the scrub-land, even passing the volcano of Suswa on the way. It feels a bit as if I’m about to embark on a short, choose-your-own-ending story. I will come out on the other side, it is only a matter of when and how.

Within the first hour my rear tube ruptured. It happened while descending an incline at a speed of about 90kph. I managed to slow the bike down and stop without losing control. As I had not seen a town in several kilometers, I was unsure where I could find a mechanic that might have spare tubes. There were a few houses on that stretch of road, and a few men offered to help. They pedaled away on bicycles and returned with two men who were self-proclaimed motorcycle aficionados. Fortunately I was carrying more tools than they, as they only had two tire irons. To make it short, within three hours I was back on the road, after one of the “mechanics” took a bus to a town about 45minutes away to find a new tube. From now on I will be carrying my own extra tubes!

Aside from running out of petrol later that day, I and the bike arrived safely to the Rutundu cabins. I spent the next couple of days there with several colleagues. It is a fantastic setting. Both of these cabins are very well maintained. They are situated directly above Lake Rutundu, and about a 90 minute hike from Lake Alice (about 3,600m / 11,800ft), both of which provide for excellent trout fishing. I have been there a couple times before, always catching at least one trout each day, not less than 50cm / 20in in length! This time, however, I was outsmarted by them, though a couple in our group caught several, so our dinners were excellent each evening, seated around the roaring fireplace. One night we even heard the loud grunts of a leopard as it hunted nearby.

The return trip to Nairobi was uneventful in terms of misadventure, but views and topography of the landscape were wonderful to interact in with my bike. We stopped for lunch at the Trout Tree just south of Nanyuki. This restaurant is built into the branches of a massive fig tree that overlooks a number of ponds on this trout farm. It serves as a great stop for a bite to eat.

Here is a photo of my bike on the dirt track above the cabins. The peaks of Mt Kenya are enshrouded in cloud cover on the horizon.

The blog portion of my website is powered by WordPress. My version (2.3) was working fine, but I had heard that the newest version (2.6) had some very nice additions, mostly behind-the-scenes tweaks and extras of which I will avoid boring you. Somehow I decided that an upgrade was appropriate and began the uploading of hundreds of new files and folders, deleting or renaming others, and changing certain lines of relevant code. As this post is proof that I successfully made the upgrade (simply because it is visible to you), there was still one glitch that resulted (and I suppose I can be very thankful it was only one problem…aside from a few of the plugins that don’t work with this version). Somewhere, in the deep bowels of the thousands and thousands of lines of code, there were a couple words of coding gibberish that failed to translate with one of my databases on the server that needs to intimately communicate with this new upgrade. This coding hiccup means that the categories that I usually assign to each post (sort of like subject tags based on each post’s content) does NOT appear. So if you are accustomed to searching for previous posts in any of my category topics…I’m sorry. I’m working with my web host to find a certain missing file that would have existed prior to my upgrade. Until I get this fixed, you will have see “Filed under , ,” at the bottom each post, where it normally would list the categories under which that post should fall.

Ironically, three days after I installed the 2.6 version upgrade, version 2.6.1 was released that fixed 60 bugs, including this very one!! I suppose this was inevitable as I am not a prognosticator.

http://www.rinkworks.com/dialect/

It translates websites into different “dialects” including Elmer Fudd, Pig Latin, and, my favorite, Redneck. Go ahead! Click on the link, enter in my website address (or any site you wish), and see how it could have been written! This could motivate me to write  more often…or simply to waste  more time.

Do you have any rabbit holes that you would like to suggest?

The weekend before I had gone to the city stadium to watch Kenya play against Guinea. I haven’t followed the Kenyan team’s performance before, but historically they haven’t excelled in the world scene of football. Recently, however, a new coach has joined, Francis Kimanzi. Apparently he has brought some change, as Kenya trounced Guinea, 2-0. I had arrived about an hour before the match was to begin, and managed to buy some of the last tickets, which put me with all the “hooligans” in the stands. Lots of bottle-throwing and general madness is precipitated from this area of the stands. When a goal was scored, I found cheering with one hand rather difficult, but the other was necessary to shield my head from a shower of foreign objects. Despite that, I caught the spirit and decided to show up again when Zimbabwe came to town.

Kenya is currently in a group of teams which include Namibia, Guinea and Zimbabwe. Results from these games count in the journey to the 2010 World Cup that will take place in South Africa.

Rumors spread that the expected turn-out for the Kenya-Zimbabwe game would be much higher than the previous game. Considering that the stadium was already packed to over capacity during the Guinea game (and that crowds broke down the stadium entrance gate halfway through the game, streaming in to fill any remaining space), I decided to be proactive in finding tickets well in advance.

Managing to purchase tickets the day before, I planned to meet several friends a few hours before the game at the stadium. These tickets were VIP, meaning they costed an equivalent of $5 instead of $1.50. It also meant that a limited amount of these tickets are sold so that one can also have room to breathe while sitting under a roofed section in case of inclement weather.

As I approached the stadium grounds, large crowds were already amassing outside the perimeter fence. Policemen were in full riot-gear at all the entrances. I found out that they were only allowing ticket-holders onto the grounds and they were not selling anymore tickets. Now these policemen really make me think of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I’ll let you see the similarity.

Here are the ninja turtles…

…and here are the riot police. What say you?

I happened to have the tickets for my friends, and they needed them in order to enter. It was tricky getting them their tickets. In one instance, as I was slipping a ticket to one of my friends between the bars of the gate, a dozen pair of hands were thrust through, trying to grab it. Several tried grabbing me to pull me against the fence, where they could have quickly rifled through my pockets. I chanced to be quicker that time.

As I waited for my last friend, the throngs began to surge more heavily at the gates. Beginning to use their shields and clubs, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles pushed the crowd back. Fist-sized rocks were then flung towards the police, at which point I swiftly decided to move to a different location.

Nyayo Stadium was packed. Music was blaring, flags and banners made the stands flutter. Someone in a full batman suit was doing gymnastics atop the scoreboard that doesn’t work. A man in a grass-skirt was involved in a 90-minute tribal dance that matched the intensity of the players on the pitch. Very interesting chants were being yelled by +30,000 people, such as “Mugabe must go! Mugabe must go!” This was obviously directed at the opposing team.

Raila Odinga, the Kenyan Prime Minister arrived to see the game, which significantly raised the volume of the cheering crowds. It also spawned more creativity in the stadium-wide chants: “Oliet, Odinga, Obama! Oliet, Odinga, Obama!” [Oliet is the star striker for the Harambee Stars.]

Very early in the game, Kenya scored the first goal. This drove the already frenzied fans into higher gear. Of course, there were also large crowds of people outside who did not manage to get in to watch the game. I’m sure the deafening screams from within served to give those crowds more “courage.” Soon they were heaving at the inner stadium gate. Once again, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles came running. One of them must have had an itchy finger. Tear gas was shot towards the gate. However, the wind was blowing back into the stadium. Soon white smoke was encroaching on the pitch, causing the coaches and sitting teammates to run down the sidelines while covering their faces. Soon the wind changed course, and the tear gas headed straight for us. Even while protecting my face with my sweatshirt, my throat still constricted and my eyes welled up with tears. Someone half-jokingly commented, “Odinga has breathed so much tear gas, this is just part of his day.”

Soon the gas cleared and we went back to our yelling and chanting.

With only minutes remaining in the game, the Kenyan goalkeeper was knocked to the ground after a corner kick. He had to be carried off the pitch on a stretcher. As all substitutions had been made, Kenya was left with 10 players to finish the game. Much to the crowd’s satisfaction, Oliet moved from his striker position, donned the goalkeeper’s jersey, and made a couple saves.

For the second week, Kenya won with a score of 2-0! They are now at the top of Group Two of the qualifiers, leading with six points and five goals.

I will definitely be going to support them when the next game comes to town…and when I happen to be here. Tonight I depart for England.