By the time I made it to the Angola/DRC border, it was getting dark, I was severely dehydrated and hadn’t been able to keep down hardly any food.
I had read somewhere online that the border was open until 6PM, so with my 5:45 arrival time and the fact that the border was remote and had […]

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So after a fitful night of half-consciousness (and one episode of flagging down the only truck that passed by the whole night for water), I woke up to find 5 bushmen poking around the outside of my tent.
Besides the whole crashing constantly thing of the previous day, I also, in my infinite wisdom after my […]

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So it’s now one day out of Luanda.  I haven’t slept well, it’s hot as Hades, and packing the bike is a pain in the ass (thanks to my overflowing wisdom in not bringing hard metal panniers and being forced to shove everything inside crappy softbags, my duffel bag, and the rest bungee’d and cam-buckle-tie-down’d […]

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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.

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Angola held its first elections in 16 years on Friday.  During the time I was there there were constant rallies (mostly supporting the main party and forgone concluded victor, the MPLA) and general chaos, with everything from random scooter parades of teenagers in party t-shirts waving flags to a quad-bike rally on the beach on […]

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After a tough week of travel from Namibia to Luanda, I was graciously allowed to camp out back at the local Yacht Club.  Free camping is great, but with a not-so-great "shower" and "bathroom facilities," after several days of playing the Great African Visa Waiting Game, negotiating the never-ending traffic, getting lost repeatedly (thanks to […]

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Thirty years of war
Destroyed roads and death but damn
Angolans can party

Jogged by the water
Dazzled by such a skyline
Sickened by the smell

New cars everywhere
So much oil sold to the west
Lets go buy stuff

Most expensive city
In almost the whole world thus
twelve-dollar burgers
 

Shacks and penthouses
This is New Delhi by day
And New York by night

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Well not really.
I did manage to snap another cylinder head bolt (in my defense, it had gotten bent from the impact from the gas tank during one my many medium-speed wipeouts in sand in southern Angola that popped off the rubber gas tank mounts and was leaking oil), and this of course means with no […]

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…If you’re on a motorcycle somewhere in southern Angola between Lubango and Benguela and have cable-tied your GPS into its mount and it feels secure, and you decide to not watch it much as you’re feeling good and flying down a halfway decent dirt and rock track, you will probably look down at some point […]

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The tracks  for this ride diary abruptly end where my GPS met its maker under what were probably wheels 1-9 of several 18-wheelers, but the commentary (as usual) continues on and on and on…
The ride from Windhoek to the Namibian border is a long, boring, and dry, boring, plain, (did I mention boring?) trip.
I was […]

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