“Your ear, soap”

“Sorry?” I say

“Soap, in your ear, let me just..” and before I had processed what he said or what was going on with my ear (maybe I did have soap in my ear, having just showered to wash the day’s sweat and grim off me) the harmless looking gentleman began digging in my ear.

After being a little heat stroked from the bicycle, taxi, and motorcycle ride in the midday heat of Mumbai, I had set out in search of dinner. Walking at a steady pace with food on my mind, I headed to a small cluster of restaurants I saw where the taxi had dropped me earlier in the evening. I passed by the cluster of restaurants, peered in the window – nothing much interested me – and I carried on. Too tired and hungry to search any more, it would be back to Café Leopold for dinner tonight. Stepping up onto another curb and dodging a few sidewalk vendors, I was passed on my right by a man who motioned and started “your ear, soap”.

I resisted, then relented, then quickly resisted again as I felt his ear tools poke and prod at the inside of my ear. As I pulled away he showed me a brown waxy ball; kneading it around the end of his finger with the ends of his very professional looking metal ear pikes. I guess the demonstration was to prove that this brown ball came from my ear and more determined, and professional assistance was needed. He offered to finish the job and do the other ear (and certainly charge me a fee). I declined… my ears were clean, so I thought. I continued along the sidewalk, and spent the time on the way to Café Leopold checking my ear; paranoid that my street ear man had planted something or removed something or penetrated something he shouldn’t have.

I had been warned of the street ear cleaners by my brother-in-law before I left Canada last week. And by others, I was warned of many other cultural and environmental differences I should expect in India. I find it fascinating to now see for myself and begin to form my own perspective on “India.” Whether it’s a street ear cleaner or the way I find that a head nod in agreement to something is more of head… bobble – India is a different place, and I have to keep my eyes (and ears!) open to these differences, and find the way that I fit into the routines, rituals, and oddities of this land… because I am the traveller, the outsider. And I am the one who needs to adapt and accept the differences and learn to make it comfortable and manageable for my time here. Really it’s the only way I know to approach it.

Feeling slightly violated, I arrived at Leopold’s and settled in. Coming in through a side entrance, I could see the café was packed with young Indian couples, friends, and businessmen, along with domestic and foreign travelers like myself. The lively and loud conversations made the room electric – dulling the generally loud noises of horns and traffic on the busy street out front. Friendly waitstaff soon brought me a Kingfisher beer and some bottled water. I watched as security at the front door checked everyone’s bag as they entered. Leopold’s had been a random victim of the Mumbai attacks of 2008 that ravaged this area of Mumbai known as Colaba. Gunmen targeted two high-end hotels including the the famous Taj (maybe famous to Westerners only since 2008, it’s a landmark many here seem quite proud of), the main railway station not far away, among other sites. As I sit enjoying my meal it’s hard not to spot the marks left from that terrible day. Bullet holes in the high ceiling and on the pillars supporting it. More bullet holes in the stained glass above the murals on the wall and in the glass in a central panel at the front. You can almost imagine the spray of bullets tearing up the room within seconds and the devastation it left behind no doubt. Then there are the commemorative plagues and paintings that speak to the resilience and enduring spirit of the place – one plague congratulating the café on opening its doors the very next day after the attack (though this point seems to be contradicted in other reports that suggest it opened a few days later).

With my meal done I walked back to my hotel and reflected on the busy day and its successes and challenges. It was a full day of activity and exploration of the vast city of Mumbai. Twelve hours of Mumbai traffic was what it took a local cyclist and myself to sort out a route for the Indian Adventure Cycling Tour to cycle into that city. We first cycled 18 km from Bandra neighbourhood (midway thru the city) to the Gateway of India, and our exit point from Mumbai next to the Taj Hotel. Then it was a motorcycle ride to the northern edges of the city and an attempt to find a way in. Unfortunately what was discovered is that it would be 60 km of city cycling to get to our hotel and not enough time in the morning hours to do this before traffic starts getting too mad for cycling, so it looks like we will bus our riders into the city instead.

There is a magical window… a morning calm in Mumbai between sun rise (about 6:30am) and 9am. The larger city streets are very cycle-able almost verging on pleasant. But at 9am the city switches on – seemingly all at once, and the traffic, noise and general congestion continue to build throughout the day… making any cycling (even on a Saturday or Sunday) next to impossible with clogged streets everywhere. Unfortunately that magic window is just a little too small for the distance to tour needs to cover.

Mumbai has been fascinating. I have loved my time here. As with any travel, a place starts to become so much more in your mind than what you had first imagined it to be. Certainly there are problems in Mumbai – enormous slums fill many pockets of the city, sanitation can be more than just a little concerning. The sea all around is creeping higher as the retaining walls that surround the sea facing parts of the city seem a temporary solution to a fundamental problem with the city plans and location. Now off to Delhi, I move on to another city, and another new day of challenges and explorations to be had. One of many we expect to have over the next four weeks here in India.

Lastly, I wanted to pass along a special thanks to Bertram, who guided me through the streets of Mumbai and gave me an insiders look at what cycling is really like here – thanks Bertram! I certainly could not have done it without you.

Upon arriving in Sudan a few weeks ago, a friend of mine joked that he had to travel halfway around the world to a country where the president is accused of war crimes to find real hospitality.

I have completed my time on the Tour d’Afrique for this year, and I am now back in Toronto. After the tour left Khartoum I had a few days before flying home, so I took one morning to visit souq Omdurman.

Omdurman is the twin city of Khartoum lying just across the River Nile. It was the site of a crucial battle in the Anglo-Sudan War. The 1898 engagement was known as the Battle of Omdurman, which saw the British reclaim control of Sudan until its eventual independence from colonial rule in 1956.

Another more recent battle in Omdurman happened on May 10 and 11, 2008 when JEM rebels made a daring advance far from their bases in Darfur to attack Sudanese government forces in what they refer to as Operation Long Arm. This major battle was deeply significant to regional politics yet it only briefly made the news in the west (more on this in a future blog post).

The Omdurman Souq, or market, is a sprawling busy place. Everything from brooms, to aluminum pots, to plastic toys, to vegetables and spices are sold here. While there I thought I would do a bit of shopping, but I also needed to find a cardboard box for my bike to transport it back home on the airplane.

As I wandered aimlessly through the corridors of the market, I was invited to sit and share tea with one of the spice sellers. His name was Mohamed. I asked if he knew where I could find a box for my bicycle. We finished our tea, and then he walked with me and he found a place and insisted on paying for the cardboard box.

I also thought it would be nice to take home a Sudanese style coffee pot I had seen many people using on the streets. Mohamed gave me one and refused to except any money for it.

Then again the following day, I sat having some tea at a sidewalk tea stop (one of many found on every street in Khartoum). Another man also sat drinking tea and greeted me as I arrived. Beyond ‘Salaam Aleykum‘ (typical arabic greeting) we exchanged no words and were not even seated next to each other. This did not stop the man from paying for his tea and mine before he finished. There was no expectation from him. I guess, he just felt it was an appropriate thing to do for a foreigner, a visitor to his city, his country.

I used to hesitate to talk positively about Sudan and its people. There is real suffering going on in Darfur and South Sudan. The government stands accused of crimes against humanity – against its own people. But being in Sudan again reminded me of something very simple… in every corner of the world, there are individuals who cannot be judged based on what we know of their country. They are only individuals and their intentions and outlook on life are often much less sinister than that of their leaders.

Some more photos from my last few days in Sudan…

morning soccer practice

Great Mosque next to Souq Omdurman

fresh juice in Souq Omdurman

tea stalls on the streets of Khartoum

Tour d’Afrique staff at ‘Dead Camel Camp’

photos by Shanny Hill

One rider on Twitter said it was ‘the hardest day of my life so far’ while another described it as the ‘biggest EFI massacre ever.’ (EFI? That’s Every Fucking Inch of the Tour d’Afrique without ever riding the support truck.)

It was an epic epic day… actually, from what I am told it was two giant days of riding in the untested roads approaching and inside Dinder National Park – a new route for us at Tour d’Afrique. These will surely be rides that live deep in the hearts of many riders, and surely for others it was simply two soul shattering, frustrating days.

I am in Khartoum tending to a rider who is on the mend from an earlier fall. The first reports I am getting from the tour suggests that it is an extraordinary and doable route, but it will need another day of riding to make it manageable for next year’s group.

As with years past, it has been our style to test new routes… enroute. We did it in Namibia last year and Ethiopia the previous year… both to great success, but not without hardship for the riders and long days for the staff. The cyclists do become part of our navigational experiments and our forays into lesser known, rarely traveled places. 

They don’t all thank us for it.

And, no doubt, we can appreciate why. For many these two days meant the end to their dream of riding EFI, and for others it was a shock to their system that they had not been eased into gently at all. This is the risk we run, and this is the style we like.

To all those cyclists enroute, you have many challenges ahead. But you are all graduates of Dinder National Park school of pain and we salute you for traveling this road with us…

A version of this post can also be found on Tour d’Afrique’s website.

I have mentioned to several riders on this tour that ‘back in my day’ (3 years ago) when I was in Sudan for the first time with Tour d’Afrique, the week of riding from Wadi Halfa to Dongola was one of the toughest on the entire tour.

Now with the completion of a paved road it is a whole new place. It wasn’t long ago that our schedule included five cycling days to get us from Wadi Halfa to Dongola. The days in the heat, sand, and corrugation were grueling but ever so serene in the evenings. The Nubian Desert then felt like a new world – uncharted territory to all of us.

Today, it still retains much of that serenity. And I must admit, as I cycled a relatively easy 150 km to our desert camp two days ago, I deeply enjoyed being able to cover such distances with the old sandy and bumpy road snaking back and forth underneath the groomed, and raised roadbed of this tarmac beauty.

On the old road the daily distances were as low as 70 or 80 km on some of the toughest days. And you never really got the same distance reading as the other riders in the group, because we all rode different tracks that spread like fingers through the desert – some a little longer and tougher than others – and most ending at our Nile campsites.

The road has changed a lot of things for the people in these regions. Some of the small villages that happened to be situated next to the new road will likely be benefiting from increased traffic and opportunity for income – selling drinks, snacks, and other essentials to the truckers, bus passengers, and tourists that pass through.

Though it is a shame now that some villages along the Nile, where the paved road no longer wanders, will likely see a sharp decrease in the traffic (not that there was much before).

There was also something to be said for arriving to a small village of just a handful of families by dirt road, and to cycle through and meet the people. The paved road allows us to pass more quickly to our destinations further along, but what time we gain, we perhaps have lost in the opportunity to have a true chance to interact with the people in these villages.

Unlike the heavy hand of the Sudanese government, regular Sudanese people are some of the friendliest of any place I have travelled. It is one of the few places where I feel as though I am treated as any other citizen on the street is treated, no worse and no better. This allows me to feel at ease, and able to explore and interact more freely.

From an organizational standpoint on the Tour d’Afrique, we have generally decided that with every kilometer of pavement that’s added to our route, we seek to return again to the days of dirt, and so we constantly explore new ways to challenge our clients after they have had the pleasure of riding such a comfortable stretch between Wadi and Dongola.

Our new route south of Khartoum promises a real off-road adventure, exploring a new ‘uncharted’ place, and hopefully having a better chance yet again to slow the pace down and interact with the Sudanese people we pass.

Dinder National Park… here we come! (stay tuned for a report from the new route in Dinder Park coming soon)

Some pictures from the past week…

Cyclists arrive to our desert lunch stop

Village scene in the midday heat

Poster of Sudanese President Bashir President Omar al-Bashir at roadside snack shop

In each country along our route on the Tour d’Afrique we have the pleasure of getting local cyclists join us to ride the portion of the tour that passes through their country.

Some of them are very skilled – completing for and winning stages. Some of them, on the other hand, are not as skilled or fit, and almost all of them lack access to replacement parts, cycling clothing, or tools. Their bikes, as a result, are often aging relics, with resourceful repair work – house clamps holding things together, handmade aero-style racing bars, faded and stretched cycling attire salvaged from who knows where.

Here in Egypt this year (as in many years past) we are joined by some top notch cyclists. They really love the Tour d’Afrique.

Pictured above, from left to right, they are Mohamed Gamal, Ashraf, Sharrif, Mohamed Kamel, and Mohsen. What they would love more than anything is to participate in the entire tour – not just cycling through their own country.

I know that because of the speed at which our cycling expedition moves, because of the language barriers, because of cultural differences, and because of the need to focus on the group as a whole – we often miss out. We miss the opportunity to really engage with our local cyclists. Their time on tour with us is relatively short.

Hopefully someday soon we will be able to find a way to have them as part of the group for the whole tour. It is after all a cycling tour through Africa, and having Africans in our group can only be a positive thing.

Here are a couple more photos from the last few days.

Lunch along the Nile on the way to Idfu.

Ali posing in front of a rail car full of sugar cane.

I am here in Egypt with Tour d’Afrique. Tonight we are in Safaga on the Red Sea. The first four days of riding are behind us and they have been challenging ones indeed.

The tour staff and myself spent several frantic days in Cairo preparing for the big start of the 2010 Tour d’Afrique. I am here to oversee the start of this year’s tour and to help out with any and all of the day-to-day tasks.

We had long lists of things to buy and meeting agendas to prepare. Shopping for small yet important things in a giant chaotic city like Cairo can be a challenge. I took four hours one day to find 70m of string and an adjustable wrench.

I went from Walmart-style Carrefour shopping complex to the down and dirty streets markets of one of Cairo’s many neighbourhoods.

Since Cairo, the tour has gone relatively smoothly. We headed into the desert and towards the Red Sea. We had a torrential downpour on day two (first such rains in 14 years I heard our local staff saying) that left my tent drenched. Day three was better weather but my body was sore from the last few days of riding.

The police in Egypt are both a help and a hindrance. They are essentially with us every moment from the time we leave our hotel in Cairo to the moment we board the ferry to exit Egypt five days from now.

I discussed this issue at length with Mahmood, one of these police officers who was with us at our camp on day 3. He said that the officers are told to protect us. Their bosses cannot risk any tourists in Egypt being harmed and the reputation of Egypt being a safe tourist destination might be severely damaged if this were to happen.

Without the police, we would simply not be able to pass through Egypt as we do, and so they are to some degree a necessecity and an integral part of the journey.

But when it comes to the low level officers tasked to protect us, some of them really seem to hate it and they also don’t know exactly how or what they are supposed to be doing to help protect us – this almost always leads to confusion, disruption of our route, and constant hassles to make them understnad what our schedule is and how important it is that we keep to it.

Example – after the hard rain the night before, day 3 began with our officers telling us that we were not allowed to continue along the road as the water had flooded the roads they had been given instuctions to stay where we were indefinitely. This is, of course, not possible. We worked on a tight schedule, having made arrangements with police and local couterparts months in advance.

Unfortuantely this meant giving the police an ultimatum – they had 10 minutes to speak with there superiors and then we would proceed as we had planned. So 10 minutes passed and we were on our way and there flooding concerns were unfounded.

I later explained this scenario to Mahmood, and I asked him “what other options did I have?” he replied that the officers in the camp had no choice but to follow orders and I had no choice but to simply carrying on as per our schedule – its a bit of an awkward situation really.

On a positive note, I intend to send a letter to the Cairo police responsible for our convoy out of the city. They did an excellent job and keep all our cyclists safe and happy. Every intersection the entire 40 km of our convoy had an officer stopping traffic for us, and 3 – 5 police cars at any given time were encircling our group, protecting us from the busy morning traffic on the ring road.

Signing off from Egypt, my next update with be from somewhere in Sudan.

In mid January the mornings in Cairo are cool. The riders who embark on this epic journey will shiver a little as they prep their bikes in the early hours of January 16th. Pumping tires, packing bags onto the support trucks, and filling water bottles all in time to depart shortly after the sun has risen for the day.

Each participant has spent months preparing, and asking many questions to many people about what to expect. They all are certainly curious to know what it will really feel like; standing at the base of the great pyramids at Giza and looking out over the 12,000 km that stands between them and Cape Town and the completion of their goal.

Here’s a quick pre-view of the 2010 Tour and its participants:

• 50+ full tour riders – those that will start January 16, 2010 and cycle almost 12,000 km to arrive in Cape Town on May 15, 2010.
• 30+ sectional riders who will join at various stages through the tour to cycle a portion of the tour in support of a friend or to experience the part of the tour they are most interested in. (while still keeping family and career in tact back home)
• At any given time there will be between 60 and 70 riders plus 10 to 12 staff on the tour.
• One third of the participants are female.
• The riders come from US, UK, Ireland, Canada, South Africa, Germany, Switzerland, Australia, France, Belgium, Holland, Norway, Italy, and Venezuela.
• The youngest rider is 18, and we have a few riders who are 60+.
• Staff include drivers, medics, mechanic, tour leaders, and a chef.
• One third of the riders are interested in racing the tour, while the rest are just hoping to complete it while seeing some sights along the way. Those racing will be timed and their results posted on our website. (Last years winning time; a mere 380 hours, 43 minutes, and 34 seconds)
• The goal of many racers and expedition riders alike is to ride the tour EFI (Every Fucking Inch) from Cairo to Cape Town without once getting on the support trucks.
• The participants stay in a hotel in Cairo and Cape Town and camp every night in between.
• The tour first ran in 2003, and this will be the 8th annual Tour d’Afrique.
• The tour travels through 10 countries in Africa: Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, Botswana, Namibia, and South Africa.

I will be traveling to Cairo in January and hope to do some more reporting from there during the first several weeks of the tour. Before the tour gets underway I will also do a few more posts to give you some insight into what this tour is really like.

In the meantime, our website has extensive information on the upcoming tour, and on the other cycling tours we run…

My last post covered some of the sources of misconceptions that travelers inevitably start their journey with. This current post is a nice contrast. Its a  recent blog I read on some Silk Route history brought to light in modern day Afghanistan.

When we think of Afghanistan, we probably think of war. The article on the Silk Route in Kabul is a great way for us to see another side of Afghanistan, and to get a taste of what else exists in this mysterious land.

The author of this article is Adrienne Mong, an NBC producer, who wrote this from Kabul, Afghanistan though I believe she is based in Beijing. The post was written as part of MSNBC’s “World Blog” which is a collection of posts from reporters, writers, and producers, that work for NBC at bureaus, in the field, and all over the world. Its a pretty good blog, considering its from network America news channel.

Adrienne visits the British Cemeterry in Kabul, Afghanistan where Sir Marc Aurel Stein is buried. Stein was a British archeologist who explored the Silk Route in the early 1900s.

Here are a few excerpts from his post. Adrienne describes the British Cemetery in Kabul where Stein is buried:

On a dusty road, behind a great stone wall and two wooden doors, lies the British Cemetery.  It’s a lovely oasis meticulously tended to by an Afghan couple. Dozens of tombstones litter the lush green lawn, their owners reflecting the great panoply of nationalities that have converged in Afghanistan: British, Polish, South African, Chinese, American, Swiss, French, German, and so on.

Describing Stein’s expedition to Dunhuang in Western China:

The second expedition garnered him even greater fame around the world but also ill repute in China. Stein wound up near Dunhuang to investigate the largely forgotten “Caves of a Thousand Buddhas,” some 400 grottoes carved out of rock and decorated with lush paintings and sculptures. A hapless monk, Abbott Wong, was the gatekeeper for the caves as well as an enormous library of thousands of precious manuscripts and silk paintings in various languages… In an act that today raises questions of morality, Stein took possession of tens of thousands of manuscripts by flattering, cajoling, deceiving, and bribing the abbott.  In fact, he procured them “for a sum which will make our friends at the [British Museum] chuckle,” wrote Stein in a letter to a friend.

On my visit to Dunhuang while leading our companies’ Silk Route cycling expedition, I never got the chance to visit the caves – I was busy running around the city that day, with errands to keep our cycling tour ticking along.

The Silk Route is full of fascinating history. I really enjoyed Adrienne’s article as I was not aware that Sir Stein was buried there. It also makes me dream of the day when more than just journalists and media outfits will be able to visit such a site. Hopefully on the other side of this war, there will be peace and prosperity for the Afghan people.

Here are a few Silk Route Links. If you have any others you can suggest, please leave me a comment.

The Silk Road – historical and cultural info

Silk Route Race/Expedition – offered by Tour d’Afrique Ltd.

Unique Travel Destinations – Dunhuang Caves

So last Friday was a big night in Toronto. Where Are You Go was making its hometown screening at the Royal Cinema on College St here in Toronto as part of the Bicycle Film Festival. You can check out the trailer here. It was also an impromptu reunion for former staff and participants of the Tour d’Afrique living in the area.

It would have taken a lot for this positive upbeat crowd to not like the movie, but let’s – for a moment – take a critical look at the film from my amateur eyes.

Positives:

• Beautiful cinematography
• Excellent interviews
• Captured the “essence” of the tour to some degree

Negatives:

• No focus or theme
• Lacked structure and conclusion
• Intro didn’t fit with the movie
• Making a docu film where the subject of the film is the filmmakers screams “I couldn’t find any other storyline in my footage”

First let’s talk about the positives of the filmmaking, and bare in mind that this was the first collaboration between Brian Vernor and the Zenga Bros and the their first full length documentary. But there are some obvious strength that each of them brought to the table.

I am going to credit most of the beautiful cinematography to Benny. My experience with Benny while I was with them for the first few weeks of their filmmaking in Egypt and from the shorts of his that I have watched is that he has a unique and creative style that is fresh and fun. There use of both sharp focused images mixed with grainy shakey retro looking footage and “handy-cam” style bits here and there gave the film a certain uncomfortable feel that fit the nomadic and constantly mobile state that the filmmakers and the tour is always in. It also expresses the discomforts of how they were living – often tired, often wanting a shower after a long day in the heat, and always ready to get up at the crack of dawn and ride, ride, ride.

The interviews throughout the film drew us in. They really are meaningful and my suspicion is that Brian was behind a fair number of these. It takes a skill to draw out real emotion and deep thought. After a long day cycling, to be asked about your day, it would be easy to say “I’m tired, I hurt, I don’t want to talk.” But to get real content they either got lucky, or have a bit of a nack for it, or they had lots and lots of bad interviews they had to sort through to find these.

My bias, as someone who has met almost every TdA cyclists since its inception and my extensive time on the tour, might have helped me relate more to these interviews, but I believe that anyone can listen to them and relate, and it could alter the impression many people have of what it’s like to travel in Africa and to cycle such a distance.

There was no focus or overriding theme to the film. There advertised theme is the “endurance of human curiosity” but if that was there theme it was weak, and it diverted to other focuses on several occasions.

The film lacked structure and the intro did not fit the film. It started with black and white footage of the team in Amsterdam on their layover on a flight from North America to Cairo. Like a children’s book it walked us through the fact that these guys were going to Africa to make a documentary. Then it flashed to some older black and white footage of Africa to give some historical context to the Tour d’Afrique and the route from Cairo to Cape Town. It all looked nice but it just didn’t mesh with rest of the film.

Lastly, making a film about themselves told me that they had (A) not been able to determine a central focus before the start of the filming and (B) that they had not been able to filter through their mountain of stunning footage wel enough to make it about something other than themselves. The only thing they could grab onto was themselves and their tall bike and their interaction with the people they met along the way. But in the end I think that worked, having them as characters in the film was ok and didn’t seem awkward or out of place or arrogant.

In conclusion, I write as if writing directly to the three filmmakers – Benny, Chirstian, and Brian have put a huge amount of energy into this project for the last two years, and they deserve the wonderful reception their film is getting. I believe Benny once told me that they had over 400 hours of footage they had to work through upon returning from Africa. That’s over 15 full days of footage! Imagine how long it would take to edit this. The few times I saw Benny in the months leading up to the premiere in New York, he look completely exhausted, and I imagined long days and sleepless nights of watching and re-watching hours upon hours of footage.

I am sure they have learned a ton about filmmaking, working in the field, and all my critical comments above are not meant to be destructive because I do hope they read this and can take from it some useful tips.

For me at Tour d’Afrique this film is invaluable in promoting our tour and giving people a glimpse into what it really is. Congratulations to Benny, Christian, and Brian. Job well done.

…oh, and if you’re wondering what the title of the film is all about – “Where are you go?” and “What are you doing?” and “Where is your home?” are common things we hear from the children as we cycle our way through Africa.

From time to time on the job with Tour d’Afrique I am lucky enough to meet some extraordinary characters. Not all of them are extraordinary in a good way, but I can comfortably say Ernst is definitely one of those interesting and remarkable people that I felt fortunate to meet.

I recently approached the Calgary Herald to see if they were still interested in writing a story about the Calgary area resident. They had planned to write an article in the lead up to Ernst joining the tour in 2007, but Ernst had to cancel when he wife became seriously ill, so the article was put on hold.

Fast forward two years, and Ernst is back home after finally having completed his dream trip through Africa. Trent and the Calgary Herald were eager to tell his story and wrote a feature article on Mr. Enns a few weeks back. Here’s an excerpt:

When Lynne died on Feb. 5, 2008, Enns knew time was short for him to take on such a physically demanding goal. So he decided to join the next tour in “excellent condition.” For three months, he lifted weights, climbed stairs and rode a stationary bike for hours each day.

He knew the tour would be worth every drop of sweat. On an earlier vacation to South Africa with Lynne, the country had wowed the couple with spectacular scenery and experiences. But to cross the entire continent on a bike, fully exposed to its smells, sounds and heat?

“That would be something else,” he says.

Read the full article on Ernst in the Calgary Herald here. From Africa with Love by Trent Edwards.

My fondest memory is seeing Ernst sitting up in one of our support trucks in the later evening after most of the tired cyclists were already asleep. I would be in and out of the trucks preparing for the day ahead and Ernst would often be there – glasses on, comfortably reading his book in some bush camp along our route.

Well done Ernst!