A Love Story

One of the most interesting details on TDA´s tours is definately the people who decide to take a break on their lives to join one of our tours. Many times, on extreme and long tours, mental toughness is as important and useful as the fitness itself.

Amanuel and Rebecca were both born in Ethiopia at the end of the 1980´s. The story of how they met could be a long blog entry itself, but it has something to do with Amanuel hacking Rebecca´s e-mail account on a service that the UN had set for Ethiopia when there was still no internet there back in 1996.

They ended up meeting each other and started dating. In 1997 Rebecca moved to the USA to go to college, followed by Amanuel one year later (to another city). Making a long story short, after many turns of life, they ended up getting married in 2006, and shortly after that, they found out about the Tour d'Afrique, wich they found “cool” but never really thought about doing, since they had never been cyclists. I was not until they decided to move back to Africa that they gave it a real thought, but really expecting to ride on the truck pretty much all the way.

So in July of 2010, they bought their first bicycle (for Amanuel), just to find out that they couldn´t really ride more than 30 km. In October, they bought their second bicycle (for her), and on a trip to Maine, they found out that the little riding they had been doing in Chicago had not prepared them for the hills at all, but since the tour was already paid for, they decided to give it a try, ready to ride the truck most of the way.

When I met the 2 of them in our hotel, in Cairo, it was funny to hear their first impressions on the group. They were really talking about giving up on the tour, since they hadn´t done much cycling since their frustrating experience in Maine on october, and they were very freightned by all the athlete-looking riders all over the place. Again, they decided to give
it a try, making all kinds of jokes about how they would never be able to ride even a fraction of the distances.

Eighteen days after the Tour started, they are both almost EFI (Every Fabulous Inch). Amanuel was caught by the truck on the last 30 km of a 170 km stage (only because it was getting dark), and Rebecca missed two half days out of  the long 14 stages we´ve done so far.

A lot more confident about themselves, they now make fun about all their fear and aprehension, and give good laughs on situations like yesterday, when Rebecca was about to cry during an allergic reaction, feeling so weak and sick that she could not keep up with him. Amanuel stopped his bike to give her some encouragement, just in time to see that she was struggling so much mainly due to a flat tire.

But that´s already another story, that could also be an entire blog entry on its own.

   — Cristiano Werneck