BIKE TOUR!!

So a bunch of crazy PCV's decided to bike about 1800km (about the distance from NYC to Orlando.) My best  friend is one of the permanent riders/organizers of this madness, so when I decided to visit her for the first week, I naturally got added to the list.

Just to be totally honest- I haven't ridden a bike since 2006. Chev took me on some short rides in her village and we biked around Ouaga quite a lot but I haven attempted anything near the 60-80km distances we'd be covering each day. In the Bukinabe sun. But I figured Chev wouldn't ask me to do anything that would actually kill me, so I went along with it. Here is a rundown of our days:

Day 0: We didn't actually start the official tour on Tuesday, but we did bike about 10-15km from Banfoura to Karfiguela. This was my first encounter with muddy dirt roads (we're in the southwest which is the rainy part of Burkina. Also it's rainy season.) We got our asses kicked by some locals at soccer (I have the blood blisters and a soccer-ball-patterened bruise on my thigh to prove it) and then we had amazing dinner at a restaurant one of the Karfiguela volunteers is helping to open. Rainstorms foiled our camping plans and we got to bed pretty late, falling asleep to the sound of monsoon rain and flashes of lightening.

Day 1: We woke up, biked 10 km, then had breakfast. I'm not usually the type of human who can function, let alone do physical exercise, before my morning cup of coffee. Luckily we arrived with only minor mishap, and continued on the rest of the way to Orodara. The countryside we're biking through is unspeakably beautiful (photos when I get an internet connection that will permit it) and cruising along actually didn't kill me, so I must have been in better shape than I'd suspected.

Day 2: Today we biked from Orodara to Bobo, which was about 80km and mostly up hills. I was having a pretty great time (aided by the copious amounts of dried mango we bought in Orodara) and the weather was lovely and mild all morning. Sadly the sun came out in full force after about the halfway point, but I think I managed to avoid getting too badly burned. I spent most of the day being chill and biking with Chev and Lauren (who have more fun and take biking less seriously than some of the more hardcore riders we're travelling with) but around 20km outside of Bobo a combination of my legs cramping up every time we stopped and the great music on my iPod made me want to bike fast. Really fast. As fast as possible. I cruised into Bobo all by myself with none of the PCVs in sight. It was about this moment that I remembered I don't speak French and can't ask the locals for directions and also that I had no idea where in Bobo (which is quite a large city) I was supposed to go. A smarter person would have waited for the others to catch up, but I knew 3 or 4 of them were ahead of me and figured I'd just see them and know where to go. FOOLISH. Half-hour later I was biking around in the blazing sun with a flat tire and no idea where I was. I managed to string together enough French to ask a few people, which had decidedly mixed results. Eventually I had the good sense to backtrack and found Chev coordinating a search party for me. It's been a really, really long day, but I also feel positively euphoric that I survived my two days of the tour and had so much fun doing it.

Ok, that's all till Chev and I are back in Ouaga and then I get to play the ever-fun game of living in airports. Photos will be posted soon, inshallah.