Another very interesting day! It started with the after effects of all the "oil" I consumed during my last two suppers. My stomach was a bit "loose" after Ararat's dose, but it really got bad after last night's Fish and chips. I had to get up a munber of times during the night and reverted to taking the diarrhea pills Mike Smit gave me. Fortunately it did not really affect my sleep as I had a good rest. I ate the sandwich I bought with the fish and chips for breakfast, had a coffe and another dose of pills. As I am writting this, I can report that the pills seems to have worked!
The wheels started rolling at 05:45. It rained during the night, so I put on my rain jacket. After a couple of kilometers of tar on the R32, I turned right on a reasonable gravel road. I managed to download today's track onto my Garmin last night. First problem: while my watch was "on track", the Garmin was not happy! It showed the track about 50 meters left of where I was, but there was only bush! After a while I stopped the track on the Garmin.
Riding was good and I went down more often than up. I did also plot a route to Piet Retief on Komoot as backup and checked back a couple of time to ensure I am on track. I came to a T- junction and checked on Komoot. That said left, while the watch showed right. I decided to follow Komoot. After a while I checked on Komoot again to see if I am right and then noticed that the Komoot track is taking me to the R32 12 km before Amsterdam, while a right would have kept me on gravel untill 5 km for Amsterdam. As the current track was taking me where I wanted to go, I continued.
I arrived in Amsterdam after 2:45 of cycling covering 42 km. The temperature was around 12 with heavy clouds and occational rain. I tried to get some coffee but had no success. Only KFC was open and I was not hungry. I did use their outside tables, which was covered and kept me out of the drissle. I retrieved a warm jacket and warm gloves and proceeded to put that on. Jacket - no problem; gloves - big problem. It is very difficult to get wet hands into tight fitting warm gloves. I gave up on my preferred pair when I could not get my right hand in. Now the second pair. Right went on, with a struggle and the left was a bigger struggle. Eventually I got that just about on. At least my fingers were in, but I still had to pull the back part onto my wrist. I put my rucksack on and off I went. While I was cycling, I pulled the back part of the left glove into place with my teeth. That was a bad idea. I managed to break a tooth! All in a day's cycling!
As the weather was looking very gloomy, I decided to stick to the tar road from Amsterdam to Piet Retief rather than my planned gravel road as this was 15 km shorter and in this weather the shortest route is the best. I always ride on the righthand side of the road as I can then go off the tar when a car approaches. I had quite a number of scares with cars and trucks passing other vehicle and getting real close to me! I also was appalled when on at number of occations cars and trucks overtook other vehicles on solid white lines. Seeing this, it is no surprise that our road deathtoll is so high!
At one point it rained so hard that I contemplated stopping if I saw cover, but there was none so I just continued. The Specialized rain jacket I bought from Cycles Direct/ Specialized West Coast really passed this rain with flying colours! In the meantime the temperature rose to about 18-21 degrees. Just before Piet Retief the rain abated and the son threatened to show itself, but to no avale. As I entered Piet Retief, it started to rain again. The only coffee shop was closed, but Mugg & Bean, which is across the road, was open. So now I am sitting here doing my blog while I wait for my hosts to arrive.
As promised, I will address Dana Murray's questions about nutrition and washing. I used to ride on Energade, but when I cycled with Hennie de Clrecq in Italy in 2017, that was not an option, so I went over to plain water and have been doing that ever since. Johann de Bruyn says I am a camal, because I drink so little. Yesterday one 750 ml bottle of water was all I used. I do carry a full spare bottle of water with me and do have the same amount of water as backup in the bladder of my rucksack. During hot days I do consume more and plan to replenish whenever I can. On day 2 and 5 I went through at least 2,500 ml of water. I do have some energy bars with me, but to date have only eaten three. I also do have some gels as backup, but have not used any yet. I wash my day's riding gear when I shower. As the air here is farly dry and cycling gear tend to dry easily, most stuff is dry in the morning. This tend to be a problem with cycling shorts and socks and that is why I have three of those. I also, sometimes, get my hosts to do my washing and tumble dry if necessary.
So that is day 11 done and dusted. Tomorrow it is 73 km to Basanagoma Game farm. My hosts arrived at 14:30 and offered to take me to their place in their bakkie. How lucky can one be!
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