Day 2 - 165 Km

Day 2 - race day 1!! 165km.....woke up at 6 am packed up the tent etc had breakfast and all set to start..just as we about to start..school boy error for not checking my bike..anyhow looked down and as the horn went noticed my back wheel is flat!! Ran back pump to up the wheel 10 min later another flat! Changed tubes, made sure no thorns were in the tyres..2 min later another flat..and so it went on and I was loosing a lot of time..ended up with changing, patching 3 times, pump up flat 6 times AND much to my slower friends delight ended up riding with the "sweep" whose primary job is to terrorize the slowest riders into quickening their pace...took a bit of flack on that one back at camp. Finally I got a replacement bike from tda as I just could not loose my efi status in the first week..so ended up doing the total ride in 8:45 i think.

The entire route was dedicated to contrasts...not only in my changing pace but in the life taking desert land on the right to the life giving Red Sea to my left, both equally haunting and beautiful. I was humbled cycling along the Red Sea by the fishermen living in small broken houses on the beach. It has only been two days since forgoing my creature comforts and I feel run down and tired, yet rejuvenated in the way that nature only knows...and here is this hardworking man who has never known any other way of life. How would I feel if this was my world...after the comfort I take in knowing that this way if life ends in four months...which seems like lifetimes away right about now and to top this very disastrous day I got held at gun point by two irate sixteen year old Egyptian military men. Jana and I decided to take a walk to the Red Sea after diner. On our way back to camp, our quiet was disturbed by angry screaming in a foreign language. This is not uncommon in Egypt as common pleasantries are typically harshly delivered but then lights came on and I was looking directly into two AK47s with our names written on them. Although Jana had the I brilliant idea to run, I turned it down in favor of following my own Hollywood directed comfort level of holding up my hands defenselessly. They approached aggressively but luckily one was pubescent and succumbed to the flirtations of Jana...telling us that this beach was the host of major drug trafficking. We had an armed escort back to camp and the night ended peacefully. I feel like three days just compressed into one.