Ibuprofen was discovered in 1961 by Stewart Adams and marketed as Brufen. It is available under a number of trade names, including Advil, Motrin, and Nurofen.
People’s alarms started going off from 0530 so not a lot of sleep was had last night at all with one thing and three others. Miles, one of the crew staying with us, got a message to say that the van was coming to pick us up at 0630 to take us back to camp.
The guest house in Tes us tentless refugees slept in
At camp those who had stayed were packing up and things were looking pretty ‘normal’. I retrieved my tent from the van it had been shoved into and packed it away, not entirely sure who I was going to resolve things for tonight. I also discovered that I’d run out of Ibuprofen in my day bag, but Liz came to my rescue and provided me with a handful of Advil to help get me through the day.
Thankfully Mark had porridge for us for breakfast, so we were starting the day with a decent meal if somewhat sleep deprived.
Stage 21 (not 2 ;-)) rider notes
For the first 20km the road was much improved on the day before, but from 20km to 47km the going was tough with lots of sand and corrugations to deal with again. I’d been feeling relatively ok on the flatter road, but once the washboard started again my arm, shoulder and neck really began to ache, so a few more painkillers were added to the mix!
From 47km things improved again and we actually had some pretty decent packed-earth tracks for much of the rest of the day which was a very welcome change from yesterday.
Again we’re camping on the edge of a town so I stopped and had not one, but two ice creams as we passed through, and got myself a cold beer to drink once I was in camp.
The towns out here seem to have seen better days. Each of them has at least a couple of relatively large factories which are now closed and decaying – nobody seems to know what they used to produce (there’s lots of speculation about them being secret Russian military facilities but I can’t really see that – one thing military facilities (secret or not) need is decent connectivity and that most certainly does not exist out here)
Into camp and I discovered that Sandy, who I usually see on the afternoon ride (she takes the van to lunch, then rides from there to camp most days) hadn’t ridden at all as she had an infection in her jaw making her look rather like a chipmunk, and with Jay’s help she’d managed to get a van to take her to Ulaangom to see a dentist – clearly today was her turn for a TSD (Totally Shit Day!).
Now I needed to figure out my tent – Grant has an identical tent to mine and had mentioned that he had some spare pole sections with him – once he got into camp he dug them out for me and we discovered that one of them with the perfect size for the broken pole, so that’s half the problem solved. As I’d been riding I’d come up with a plan for how to hold the other end together involving gaffer tape, electrical tape and some thin rope which I carry with me:
Kiwi ingenuity to hold my damaged tent together.
The ‘problem’ is that the end of the pole to the left is supposed to be screwed into the aluminium ring, however the thread has mostly stripped off the pole-end, and is damaged in the aluminium ring, so that join no-longer stays together on its own.
I created a ‘ring’ of gaffer tape round the pole, then tied a short section of rope ‘above’ that, each end of which is then tied round the other two arms. The other rope you seeing running from top to bottom is then pegged to the ground to keep the angle of the pole into the ring correct – it’s complicated, but so far it works!
I’ve also taken the dressing off my knee this afternoon to discover that although there’s a reasonable area of skin missing it’s not too deep, so given how dry the air is round here I’m hopeful that it’s going to heal pretty quickly!
Ouch!
We’ve got two further riding days until our next rest day in Ulaangom which according to the schedule are 124km and 61km respectively, however given the road conditions the decision has been made to shorten tomorrow’s ride to 100km.
Everyone’s finding the riding really tough, and most people are only riding half a day at present, many are riding to lunch, while a group of others are riding from lunch, so I think this move to shorten tomorrow and even the days out is intended to make it more realistic for everyone to ride the full day – makes sense to me 🙂
Because we’re so close to town, and right on the edge of the river, we’ve had loads of visitors stopping by wondering what this strange circus which has turned up on the edge of their town is about, with a significant number of them speaking a surprising amount of English. The river has also provided an opportunity to get some clothing, and our bodies, somewhat cleaner than usual on a camping day!
There’s also some hope that Liz may be coming to my rescue once again – she’s previously been in touch with a new rider (another Steve) who lives in Seattle and is joining us in Gorno (about ten days from now) and has emailed him to see if he’d be able to go into REI and purchase either the necessary replacement parts for my tent poles, or failing that a complete set of new poles for me – fingers crossed!
I’m hoping for an early night after last night, and expect that I’ll sleep no matter how hot it is in my tent (sunset tonight is 2245) or how noisy it is outside – let’s just hope there’s no wind storm and that my makeshift tent repair is up for the challenge!
Riding data
I love how you McGyvered your tent…and Will’s tent helpers are very cute. Small boys are seriously the same the world over.
I’ve been McGyvering further today, trying to epoxy the broken bit back in – we’ll see tomorrow if I’ve been (more) successful. Will’s helpers were very cute, and very cool with it!