2nd Longest Day

Well our second longest day of the tour (in distance) took us through the rolling hills of Zambia where for every downhill there was just another uphill after it. The expedition riders left at the crack of dawn and the racers started 30mins earlier to allow everybody enough time to get to camp last night. Nothing like a few rain clouds, some lightning and a bit of thunder to get the legs moving and get to camp early. The road was a mixture of smooth bitumen, potholes and dirt lined with excited children who just wanted to wave and say “How are you?” Their beautiful, smiling faces can spur even the tiredest of riders on…sometimes. Lunch was a delicious mixture avocadoes, fresh tomatoes, cheddar cheese, ham, Spanish onions, pineapple and oranges as well as energy bars to keep every one going the distance. As it is the Easter weekend, people were out in force and so happy to see you on the roads and landscape is an ever changing mix of lush green trees, corn rows, sunflowers and rocky fields of granite boulders. And the storm! …yes, well it hit us just after dinner last night and turned our little soccer field camp into a rice paddy field of water and grass and sent riders scurrying to their tents to make sure they were pitched correctly to avoid becoming a pond and also avoid being blown away when the wind picked up in the middle of the night. But who really cared after a day of 195km?????