Someone Else's Perspective: The Crossing

The Crossing – Day 5

… I can see readers thinking “This epic of bad spelling, unorthodox punctuation, and run-on sentences just keeps going”… And so does this “crossing” J … Well it certainly seemed like that from my perspective as I was trying to get through it! But fear not, my longwinded description and the crossing its-self do indeed come to an end quite soon J…

Dawn broke on the fifth day much as it had on the previous four… with the sun steadily rising into the clear sky and the desert bracing for yet another photonic onslaught! I got up and filled my water bottles, loaded up the bike and then proceeded to drive over to where the track North started (in the “police” end of town) and proceeded to sit around waiting for “the Ethiopian guy” and his car to show up. I waited till about 8:30 and figured out which was his car (it was a beaten-up 4WD pickup) but there was just no sign of him or for that matter of the little fixer guy. I was getting quite impatient since every minute that I waited the sun got higher in the sky and the day got that much hotter. After half an hour of waiting and absolutely no sign I decided that I should head on ahead myself with full load and see how bad it really was… That way I could move slowly ahead and when/if (the when was really the only probable outcome) I got stuck then I would just wait till the 4WD came along to help me (yes I was actually sure that the car would come along in a short while) Anyway it gave me something to do and I had no plan of going more than 10Km from town alone anyway… Id just stop and wait or come back to town as necessary… It gave me something to do J

So I rode wonderingly off to the North on my overloaded bike in the deep sand. But I didn’t get far. I got about 700m and then reached the first of the really big river-bed crossings. I stopped and looked at it and the sand was very soft and very deep and very chewed up by crossing trucks etc. I didn’t think I had much hope but decided Id give it a go… It was at worst only a short walk back to town J. And unsurprisingly I got really well bogged about half way across… I was amazed that I got that far and likewise I was impressed with the bikes ability to just chug away in first gear barely moving forward while the back wheel churned in the sand and I heaved away straddling the seat and strained with my feet sinking to mid shin into the loose sand as I inched the bike forward. But it was hopeless so I switched off, sat back and waited… while the sun climbed up the sky. After only about ten minutes the little fixer guy appeared at the edge of the sand crossing and seemed rather agitated. He came over and I explained the rational for my going ahead which seemed to calm him a bit (I think he thought I was running away and was not going to pay him for his services). Then he helped push me forward (with the bike engine chugging, the rear wheel churning, and he and me heaving) and after only a few minutes we were safely out of the deep stuff and on the shallow stuff that comprised the opposite bank. I explained that I intended to move forward again but that he shouldn’t worry since I was sure Id be bogged somewhere further along the track when he and the Ethiopian guy eventually came along (I figured this would be an hour or more away if “African Time” was in effect as it seemed to be!) The fixer seemed to think that was OK and he set off running back to town to hurry the Ethiopian guy along (I sure as eggs would have walked rather than run but he seemed pretty keen as all little fixer guys are). And I wibbled slowly off on the bike in the sandy track. I got another few Km along and then got equally bogged in the next big sandy crossing. At that point I didn’t even try to force my way ahead, I again just left the bike there (it stands its self up nicely when deeply bogged in sand J) and went and waited in the shade of a tree with some of the Turkanas who were likewise putting the shade to good use.

And about 30min later the $WD showed up on queue… But, not wholly unexpectedly it had a load of about 15 extra people and some assorted personal belongings strewn in/on/over it… It was effectively being the local public transport and right then I knew I was going to be in for a long long day J I met the driver guy and we discussed what I had in mind. He seemed OK with the idea of taking my luggage (his passengers were free to sit on my stuff as much as they liked). I said Id probably have to go very slow in some places and he said hed be stopping a few times for a few minutes here and there. We agreed that $10 per hour were a fair price (actually that’s ridiculously expensive compared to what his other passengers were paying but that’s how things go here when you are a rich white guy playing around on your big expensive motorbike… you pay a bit more!)

So, The luggage was taken off the bike and put in the truck. With a heave from behind the bike was un-bogged and meandered its way under my limited experience sand driving piloting to the far bank, and me and my entourage headed North. And to avoid the long and tedious details, we made it… It took a few hours… and we had to stop a dozen times at every little group of local huts to talk to some cousin or pick up some fish from a brother or drop off a new shirt to his auntie or just too cook up some breakfast since I had made them rush off so early this morning without eating…. Oh and of course to pick up the goat that had to be taken along for I forget who… but in the end, we made it off the horrid sandy track, into Ethiopia, and onto a recognizable and more importantly a rideable road J

Actually I have to say that once that load of about 50Kg was removed from the bike its terrible behavior in the sand also disappeared instantly… The sand stayed deep and in fact got deeper. The river crossings in deep loose churned sand continued and though I had to paddle across I never got bogged again, and I never fell over once… In fact it was almost a pleasure riding it!... It seems that I was simply way of the reasonable weight for this kind of riding. And that makes perfect sense too. You see even the small high performance trail bikes that you see hacking around at stupidly high speeds on sand and mud filled moto-cross tracks doing incredible arial tricks, well they have exactly the same sized wheels that my hideously over weight touring bike has… All my extra weight still has to be supported by the exact same size “foot-print” of the tires on the sand… which means I sink in way further than they do and that’s what makes my bike handling so terrible… The steering just does not work when the front wheel is ploughing through rather than rolling over the sand. But as soon as I reduced the weight, my wheels are now starting to roll more than plough and I can ride! J Of course, my excessive luggage aside, it doesn’t help at all that the bike its self both a larger tourer and older technology… It weighs in at over 200Kgbefore I even start putting crash bars and other protection gear on it let alone the luggage boxes. A modern equivalent bike can weigh in at about 170Kg which right there would account for most of my suffering… I knew the bike was overly heavy when I decided to buy it but I just decided to go with it anyway since the bike is a classic and I would only be doing a little of this serious off-road… Like I said, “self-inflicted” suffering J

But back to the story… So after a very slow and quite frustrating day of riding (though comparatively very easy riding) I made it to the first town in Ethiopia called Omerate. And I found the immigration and customs offices and managed to check-in to the country with no difficulties (not even an extra road-tax fee or visa-validation fee, or anything – yay!) and then I went and found the fixer guy and the driver and paid them their dues. And by then it was about 3pm. But my new problem was that I had absolutely no Ethiopian money (called Birr) and I was again short on fuel. There were no banks or bank machines in this little out-post and fuel and food were very expensive. I also only had a very limited supply of US$. That being the case I decided to head off along the big road (a highway under construction) toward the nearest town with banks etc… That was over 200Km away and though the sun was still beating down I figured Id rather ride in the heat than arrive late at night in a foreign town with no money and not speaking the local language (which by the way is “Hammarric”). So I bought ten litres of fuel with a US$20, glugged down a cold soft drink (at least they had “cold” here unlike for the past three days) and rode off into the dust again, having successfully managed to complete the “crossing” albeit with a little support for the last couple of sections… I was relieved to say the least

… But my struggles where not yet quite over J…