The day that got better! (Stage 18)

I’d needed to pee just before midnight, which woke everyone because the door was so rattily and clanky – as it turned out I wasn’t the only one, so it wasn’t such a bad thing that we were all awake.

Surprisingly my alarm woke us at 0600 – we’d expected that we’d be awake before then, and it was really only as a second thought that I’d even set it.

Thankfully with being in our hut it made getting everything packed away quick and easy and we were still ready for breakfast.

Out on the road and the wind was as strong and in the same place as it had been at the end of yesterday so we got quickly into our rotation to try and provide some cover for each other. A quick stop at 15km to take of layers and we were back on our way.

We stopped at the 27km coke stop for drinks and biscuits. We’d been hoping that the kink in the road would ease things, and for the first 5km they did – we were flying along at 30+ km/h, but sadly that didn’t last and we were back to battling the wind.

We kept the front person rotating, but because of the direction of the wind it actually meant that person 1 and 3 were fighting the wind, while 2 and 4 had things easier, and in fact being person 3 was worst because you couldn’t even set the pace, you had to try to keep things at the pace of the person leading.

The oncoming trucks continued to provide a decent sand-blasting with each passing – on some occasions they were even throwing up gravel as well as sand and dust, and that really hurt! This video I took when we had a break doesn’t really do it justice, and it’s a lot worse when they are coming towards us!

At the next break I took a video of the sand blowing off the dunes.

By the time we got into lunch we were feeling pretty second hand. Unfortunately the wind was making lunch pretty unpleasant as well with dust blowing everywhere. Poor Lezinda was having a bad day trying to keep everything clean and frankly loosing!

Australian Kevin had been finding it tough going in the group, and decided that he was going to ride alone in the afternoon. Canadian Kevin needed to ‘use the shovel’ but there was no cover at all where lunch was, so he set off a little early to find somewhere more discreet further along the road.

Mateo and I set off and could see Kevin ahead, but we just weren’t making a lot of progress in catching him. In the end Mateo decided he wasn’t going to close the gap and that he was better off dropping back to ride with Australian Kevin, so I set out on my own.

In the end it took me nearly 10km to catch Kevin and it was a serious battle to do so! I was certainly grateful to drop in behind him for a couple of kms of relative calm.

A little time later we passed Dominic who was having a tough time on his own – he’d ridden with us a little in the morning, but the hadn’t gone terribly well, so he’d ended up going ahead again. He sat behind us for a few km, before joining into our rotation.

Fortunately the road isn’t terribly busy, and we can hear the traffic approaching despite the wind, so were riding three across which meant we got two kms of relative calm for each km of battling.

We stopped at the 96.4km coke stop, and were very pleased to find super-cold drinks in a freezer – very refreshing in the middle of a long hard ride.

Continuing on and the best news of the day began to creep up on us from around 105km, where we noticed that our speed was increasing – by 115km the wind was actually over our shoulder and we were comfortably sitting at 32 – 33 km/h – a huge relief after the previous distance!

We tried to find the next coke stop but it was a tiny town of ramshackle buildings and we couldn’t work out which one might be the store – several of them appeared to sell fuel, but no sign of a coke – it turns out we had the distance wrong, and it was one of the first places in the town we’d passed.

For a while the road condition deteriorated, which as Kevin put it

This is sucking the fun out of the afternoon

Fortunately it wasn’t super bad for too far.

Having missed the coke stop we were getting pretty low on water, so when Max came past in the truck, even though it was only 15km to go we flagged him down to refill bottles – the water in the tank in the back of his truck is fairly disgusting, but it was better than nothing.

At camp there were options for ‘huts’ or tents which the locals were renting out, but I was feeling the need for some time alone so opted to wander out into the desert a bit and pitch my tent. The wind was still blowing pretty stiffly, so I had to cast around for some decent sized rocks for the windward end to ensure everything stayed put.

Tent up, out of cycling kit, wash, soup, lots of water, some chatting and writing, and a shorter wait than often before dinner.

I thought that Annegrette summed up today well

Well that was tiresome.

Later: One major opps I made today was to forget that my New Zealand cycling jersey has significantly shorter sleeves than the others I’ve been wearing – the upshot is that I now have a 4cm wide stripe of burnt upper arm – by the time I realised it was happening it was way too late to do anything about it.

Dinner tonight was great – a really good lasagne and coleslaw (sans cucumber – hoorah!).

The dishes rotation had got round to me which was the downside of the lasagne having been ‘baked’ over the gas burners which had – in Adam’s terms – added a layer of caramalisation – most people would say it was burnt to the bottom!

The fact that we switched to Mauritanian time last night, but that dinner was still at 1800 meant that it was dark pretty much by the time we were done with dinner and dishes. Once it’s dark there isn’t really anywhere to be other than in your tent.

I spent some time trying to minimise the amount of dust in the bottom of the tent – something of a losing battle, but I at least got it into one corner and put my tent bag on top of that to keep it as contained as possible!

By the time I got into my tent and got things sorted the wind had gone almost completely and the moon was yet to rise, so I spent some time lying half-in half-out of my tent looking at the stars above.