Through the course of a two-week cross-country cycling tour among friends old and new, there develops a repertoire of experiences, words and phrases that punctuate the event and bring humor anew to the group every time the phrase or experience is mentioned. Bike Kenya 2012 had more than a few of these. Here's our Top Ten:
1. “Alex has ANOTHER flat.”
Alex Drummond’s bike punctured tires 7 times--the only bike that flatted.
2. “After we get out of the town, it’s RELATIVELY flat.”
Promises, promises. We had only
one flat-land riding day. All the rest were hilly almost from start to finish. But our guides kept trying to make it seem like "just around the river bend..."
3. “Hey! Hi! Obama!”
To get our attention as we passed
by, a man in Kisumu yelled out to us perhaps the only three English words he
knew (and, technically, one isn’t English). You know, of course, that Barak Obama's father was from Kenya (near Eldoret).
4. “Is that a white or black hippo?”
It’s white or black rhinos, not
hippos, Alex.
5. “Finish it!”
A man walking along the roadway,
watching us struggle up a difficult hill, gave us a thumbs up and these two
encouraging words. We took his word...and did!
6. “Was that a ‘slip’ or a ‘fall?’”
When one of our team members would have a mishap on the bike, we would enter into a friendly debate with theological implications: "Was that really a fall? Or was it just a slip?" A few times it was profoundly a crash. I "fell" or "slipped" five times during the two weeks--four times in Hell's Gate National Park. Go figure the theological nuances of that!
7. “These transportation vouchers will get you a taxi right to the hotel.”
When our flight in Chicago was
cancelled, KLM gave us ground transportation vouchers, which for several hours
not a single Chicago taxi driver would accept.
8. “What kind of giraffe [insert any other animal or plant here] are
those, Bob?”
Bob, our team member who is a PhD
biologist, knew much more about the animals and plants we saw than the game
park or zoo guides. He provided context and color commentary to much of what we saw and experienced.
9. “Jambo!” and “How are you?”
Shouted a thousand times a day by
children and adults we passed along the roadways. Often toddlers would start jumping up and down and yell at the sight of us and school children would run along beside as long as they could.
10. “Black Mamba.”
a. The name of a deadly-poisonous African snake.
b. A name given to a heavy, steel-frame,
single-speed bicycle most common in Kenya. These tanks carried heavy commercial burdens--eggs, baskets, milk containers, steel. Sometimes, we would pass riders of black mambas and they would then make incredible efforts to catch up to us--sometimes succeeding. One young man, Joseph, rode over 10 miles with us.
c. The name Bishop Nixon Dingili gave his bike. We all named
our bikes for fun. Names included: "The Rift Rider," "Kermit the Frog," "Jill," "Dundee," "The Eldoret Express," and "The Blue Bird."
