After the Great Valve Cover Bolt Airlift of 2008 was completed, and the victory parades had stopped, the ticker tape was swept from the streets, and the NY Times journalists had (mostly) stopped calling, it was time to hit the road.

My side bags, which of course are cheap South African brand and made of nylon, had been “sewn” back together by a bush shoe repair guy (ok so he technically lived in a slum, not the bush, but his talents do not exceed his less raw sewage-infested brethen).  As a general rule for those buying equipment in South Africa, if it’s a brand you haven’t seen in the States or Europe, not only is it made in some forced child-labor camp in China, it’s such poor quality that no one in the Western world will carry it.

So with my gear able to be packed again, I woke up early on my 3rd (4th?) day in oil company compound paradise after the previous day’s aborted attempt to head out.

I had fresh laundry (thanks to Chris), a fresh stock of powerbars (thanks to Chris), a fresh stock of water (thanks to Chris), and freshly manicured fingernails and toes (thanks to - just kidding),

I then promptly spent too long packing, and after leaving sometime after 10AM, headed the completely wrong way out of town for several hours.  Instead of using my new/old GPS (it doesn’t allow map loading, but at least shows what direction you are going), in my nonstop infinite wisdom asked for directions that were consistently worth precisely what I paid for them.

One thing that unites Africans, across over a billion people, 9,000 languages, and tens of thousands of tribes, is that they are all uniformly TERRIBLE with directions.  Just god-awful.  The answer, if not a puzzled look, is always “straight ahead!”

It’s never straight ahead.  Sorry.  If it was straight ahead I wouldn’t be asking directions, Magellan.

Anyways, the end result was that I was forced to turn around after almost 150Ks in the wrong direction (at least it was tarmac), and after screaming, stomping the ground, and swearing like sailor with Tourette’s syndrome, I had made it only about 150ks total before I was forced to bush camp on the side of the road somewhere north of Ambriz.

Then the fun began.

The next day after a poor night’s sleep (like any night bushcamping), I packed the bike, kitted up in the heat and humidity, and began what is tentatively titled The Worst Day of My Life.

Seriously.  This is not actually an exaggeration.

Read about it next time.

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