Bike Trip

Sunday, April 23, 2006

All week long, Tom, another PCT had been trying to get a bike trip together. The plan was to bike to the beach, spend the night at a rented house then bike back. Unfortunately, the plan fell through due to the fact that the cheaper houses that we knew of had been rented. While the plan foiled, we still decided to go on a bike trip.

On Sunday morning at 8:30, I met Tom and Kate at L’Hotel Residence. It is a hotel, which also counts as a landmark, near my house. The plan was to bike about 25 km to a crossroads town. For those of you who are eager to know what town it was, well, I don’t really remember the name. The road that we were on, connected Thies and Popenguine (The beach that we had been planning to go to).

Kate, Tom, and myself, were on our way. Along the way, we had a few locals pedal for a bit with us. The views were awesome to see. We made it to the unidentified crossroads time in about an hour and fifteen minutes. We all felt good, so we decided to pedal 10 km more and go to Popenguine.

We made it to Popenguine at around 10:30. None of us brought clothes to swim in, so we barely even got a glance of the ocean. Although, what I saw of it, was pretty nice. Instead of immediately pedaling back to Thies, we ate breakfast in Popenguine. I ordered a ham and cheese omelet, orange juice, and later a Coke. I got a ham and cheese omelet, Coke, and this orange-carrot juice that was interesting. I must say I prefer orange juice with pulp instead of orange juice with carrots.

After breakfast, we decided to make the 35 km trip back to Thies. The trip back was not fun. Coming to Popenguine, we apparently had the wind in our favor and the gradual slope of the land in our favor as well. Going back, we had nothing in our favor, so we had to make a few roadside stops.

The highlight of these stops occurred during our first stop. Yes, you guessed it, WE SAW MONKEYS. They could have been Ebola monkeys, but we saw monkeys, and that is the important thing. In Wolof, one would say, “Binu dawalee sunuy velo, giis nanu ay golo.” That phrase took me 20 minutes to figure out and it might not be right, but it is supposed to say “When we were ridding our bikes, we saw some monkeys.” I couldn’t even say that in French….shows what 15 years of being tortured through French class will do to a kid. I tried to get close enough to take pictures of them, but they are sneaky little guys and there were a lot of babies, so I didn’t want the mamma monkey to come and eat me because that is what they do here.

After that first stop, we still had about 28 km left in our journey back to Thies. Every minute of it was painful. The worst part about it, when we got about 20 km from Thies, there were mile markers showing how many kilometers we had left. Well, the spacing couldn’t have been entirely right and they only made us cry in pain even more.

Finally, after 70 km of biking, we made it back to Thies. I planned to take a shower the minute I got home, but the water was out (happens a lot during the day here) so I just went to the L’Hotel Residence to study. I was there for about 20 minutes and realized that I needed to get home because I could barely move. For the rest of the day, I laid in bed unable to move.

On Monday, many of the other trainees looked at us in amazement, much as my parents in Thies did too. Also on Monday, I rode my bike to school and it was a terrible choice. Every turn of the pedal was painful. Fortunately, the trip was great and we plan to do it again next weekend but spend the night in Popenguine.