DAY 4 WE ARRIVED TO SAGAFA

Last night during our evening rider meeting we had a basic Arabic course. We have local Egyptians riders that are cycling with us and they gave us a first lesson.

The chef preparing dinner, vegetable broth with chicken and potatoes.

 The South Africans putting their tents, Jos and Peter from South Africa

This is my hight tech set up, in my tent sending the day's picture via internet from my laptop. I have a local sim card that I use on a USB modem stick and it works fine. I also have an international one that can roam in case the local one does not work. I will buy new ones in each country, or at least where available.

Today was a very fast day, we rode 94 km in less than 4 hours and even stopped a few times for taking pictures, we had some more flooded roads from that storm of day 2 and we finished the stage at 11h00 a.m. at a resort along the red Sea in a small town named SAGAFA. The first few lucky finished early and managed to book themselves a hotel room. I was one of them and really happy about that.

Having a hotel room not only means getting a shower (not a bad idea after 4 days in the desert and 550 km on a bike) but it also means laundry...

We used the rest of the afternoon to clean our bikes with the Red sea as a background. The chains and cassettes are full of sand and need attention. We have been warned that tomorrow is a tough day with 139 km and serious hills. We are leaving the Red sea and crossing the montain range to reach the Nile.

This is my room, with my cycling pants drying, I also lend extra balcony space to fellow cyclist who did not have a balcony...

DAY 2 & 3

Day 2 was one of the hardest cycling day of my life. It started well, we had 166 km to do and the first 50 km went fast, so me and Jos, (a South African rider) decided to stop and have lunch at a resort along the red sea... This was not knowing the desert.... After lunch, (which took for ever, I and a half hour to get a cheese burger done...), the wind came out of nowhere and blew into our faces at gale force sandblasting us. Our average speed suddenly dropped from 28 km per hour to bellow 12 with a good 70 km to go...
We teamed with other cyclist drafting and sharing the work, but it was hard. It was hell...Many cyclist lost their EFI status, which means that they had to get on the truck and will not qualify for the "Every Fucking Inch" status from Cairo to Cape Town. We kept our heads down, taking turns in front and doing short relays, and we made it to camp by a few minutes before official cut off time...

As you know, bad news never come alone and as we made it to camp exhausted, just for nightfall, an enormors storm exploded... Try to pitch your tent in the dark with gale force winds and heavy rain...

Today, Day 3 was a good surprise, first despite the exhaution of yesterday, I felt very good straight after wake up (5h00 am) and the winds had now turned in our favour, so it meant tail winds. I decided to team with a few strong cyclists and we rode a perfect peloton all the way to the finish line in a reccord time. 144 km at nearly 30 km per hour average! Probably my personal best ever. We had a huge storm last night and the desert was flooded! Yes flooded... Strange... At one stage the race was stopped by the police as the road was completely cut by the floods.

It is nice to arrive at camp early, it gives you time to set your tent in no hurry and organise all the stuff in your bags and so on. This now day 3 without any cleaning facility, no water for washing or showering, but apparently tomorrow night we can have acces to showers. Looking forward!

The showels at the back of the truck are for going to toilets, you dig a hole and bury your number 2...

The lunch truck is at half way point and carries food and water. This is the occasion to share the first half feeling with fellow cyclists and regroup if you have lost your peloton. You take a 15 minutes brake and you carry on to camp

My tent; the wind is blowing so heavily that putting your tent feels more like taking a sailing course...
Look at my tent flying...

Stop at a garage for a coca Cola brake. They are so few shops or petrol stations here that when ever ther is one, we stop and have some refreshments.

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LET THE RACE BEGIN

Day one went well.


We rode 130 km. The start was faboulous in front of the pyramides, wao, what a scene. We got escorted by the police from our hotel, they cut the traffic for us all the way to the pyramids with sirens on... Quite impressive. After a few speaches and the group photos, we still had to do a 40 km group ride on the highway before (the race finally started and we could go as fast as wanted. I cycled the second part of the day with Gabriel, a Swiss Italian guy who speaks French. We did a good job at cutting the head wind by trailing each others and we managed a very good average of nearly 30 km per hour. We did climb 900 m today, so it wasn't flat....

As soon as we got out of Cairo the air became clear and it was just sand...
I reached camp site just before 4h00 in the afternoon and building the tent plus getting organised was actually a bigger mission than I thought. I guess that with time, this will improve. No water, (except for drinking, no toilet, just sand here... and a magnificent sky full of stars. It is pretty cold in the evening, but daytime was hot.

Tomorrow is a big day 160 km and we will be camping next to the Red sea which we will follow for 3 days.

Tonight we had spagetti bolognaise for dinner.

PACKING

Here they are! The 2 trucks that are going to be our best friends for the next 4 months. They will carry our bags, our food our water, our kitchen ...

Inside the trucks, our lockers. Each rider is allocated into one locker which he is allowed up to 40 kg. The organization is very strict about this, and each one of us had to be weighted. Some guys who were over 1 kg had to leave some stuff behind, or make a deal with lighter riders .... I was exactly 40 kg ... after "lending" my travel guides to somebody.

We are all called in one by one to fit our luggage inside our locker allocated.

Each rider Had to be checked and the luggage weighted. Many riders were anxious about the 40 kg limit ...

Sam, who took my travel guides and few other things from other riders is busy trying to fit all this into his locker ...

The thing is, we gonna have to do this twice a day for 120 days, so it better be easy and fast, so many of us are gonna have to let some stuff go if we want this to be a painless process ...

CRASH COURSE & BRIEFING

This morning we had a 2 hours crash course on bike maintanance and repais by Chriss, the official tour mecanic. We are suppose to look after our bikes ourselves and Chriss will help for the more serious problems.

We had our first daily briefing about the next day stages. We will start with a 130 km day followed by 160 the next day and so on.... We will be doing over 900 km in 6 days... We will be doing 6 desert camps in a row...which means that our next shower will be in a week and 900 km.
On day one we will climb 900 meters, but is is all on aswalt, so it is not bad.

We also received our number plates and race chips... My race number is 113

ALLIANCE FRANCAISE OF AFRICA

Gerald wants to thank all the Alliance Francaise in Africa, who have donate a bike and many thanks for Ludmila for her extra ordinary work Alliance Francaise in Cape Town to make all these gifts to happen.

PRE RIDE IN CAIRO

We did a 28 Km ride from the hotel to a pyramide close by, a good way to test all equipments, bikes and get used to the Cairo poluted air and crazy traffic.

Here is my bike, carbon frame GT Zaskar, very light and fairly confortable.

View of my handle bars, as you can see, I am equiped with a full HD mini camera, a GPS and a small bike computer. All this technology requires energy and charging, so I have solar panels with me to recharge these high tech equipments.

CAIRO...

Gerald arrived in Cairo the 12th early in the morning... It took him some time to get to the hotel  at 4 o'clock and then thewhole day yesterday he tried to get internet connection working, nothing seems to work in the hotel and today after visiting the Pyramids he took a taxi for two hours trying to find an internet cafe where the connection works. Then he went 40km out of town to the Carrefour Supermarket and finally got a connected to the internet. So here some of the photos he sent me and few more can be seen on the facebook.