Day 156
Sleeping location: Legetafo Central, Legetafo, Ethiopia
Distance (km today/total): 114 / 11433
Estimated climb (m today/total): 1000 / 84500
Landscape emulator: Shropshire
Distance (km today/total): 114 / 11433
Estimated climb (m today/total): 1000 / 84500
Landscape emulator: Shropshire
Day in three words: Stomach of doom
Without curtains I got a nice early alarm clock, but after faff and trying, but failing, to convene with Rebecca I didn’t actually leave until 9am. Addis was 130km away but the terrain wasn’t too hilly so it was doable, and Rebecca and I agreed to keep in touch and stop on the outskirts of the city if we didn’t make the centre. I set off into the most boring landscape for ages, low rolling hills through fields of wheat and grass. Nothing was flat but nothing was steep either, so progress was decent but unspectacular. On the way out of DB were a load of runners coming the other way, all of whom seemed to be absolutely nailing it; I’m glad they weren’t going the same way as me as I might have been overtaken quite a lot. There were loads of breweries, including Dashen and Habesha, two of the biggest ones, presumably because of all the grain grown around here. Very little of note happened, apart from a traffic policeman trying to tell me I needed a “bike licence” in order to extract a bribe from me. The vibes from the locals felt weirder and more unfriendly than they had in the previous weeks, although this may have been my perception after hearing about Rebecca’s horrible rock attack.
Annoyingly my stomach was still giving me trouble and I had to keep stopping to use the toilet. Because this was all farmland there were no opportunities for “wild toilet”, so every time I had to go to a cafe, park up, order a soft drink, find the toilet/hole, use it, come back, drink the soft drink, pay, leave. All this time, especially with the typically slow Ethiopian service, started to take big chunks out of my buffer. The worst was when I tried to stop for lunch. I chose a crappy bar because it was in a “proper” building and I thought it might have proper toilets (it didn’t). When I arrived I ordered pasta but 45 minutes later nothing had happened. I asked the waitress about pasta but she had no idea, so I ended up paying for my drinks and leaving; nobody stopped me to say “your pasta is coming” so maybe I never actually ordered it. This wasted further time as I then needed to stop for bananas and biscuits to keep my energy levels up.
At some point during all my stops Rebecca, who had set off more than an hour later but was absolutely nailing it to try and catch me up, overtook me without either of us realising. By the time we did realise, she was 20km away and I was 35km away and there was only 90 minutes of daylight left. She needed to drop her (still sick) bike off with a mechanic in Addis the next morning as it was close to Ethiopian Christmas and she wouldn’t be able to the day after, so she committed to Addis and I decided to see where I got to by sunset. The traffic started to increase and it seemed like everyone was out buying their Christmas dinner, as there were a lot of chickens and sheep (some dead, some alive) strapped to various unsuitable vehicles. I didn’t fancy navigating a big busy city in the dark so I stopped, annoyingly, 15km short of Addis in a moderate but noisy hotel.
Without curtains I got a nice early alarm clock, but after faff and trying, but failing, to convene with Rebecca I didn’t actually leave until 9am. Addis was 130km away but the terrain wasn’t too hilly so it was doable, and Rebecca and I agreed to keep in touch and stop on the outskirts of the city if we didn’t make the centre. I set off into the most boring landscape for ages, low rolling hills through fields of wheat and grass. Nothing was flat but nothing was steep either, so progress was decent but unspectacular. On the way out of DB were a load of runners coming the other way, all of whom seemed to be absolutely nailing it; I’m glad they weren’t going the same way as me as I might have been overtaken quite a lot. There were loads of breweries, including Dashen and Habesha, two of the biggest ones, presumably because of all the grain grown around here. Very little of note happened, apart from a traffic policeman trying to tell me I needed a “bike licence” in order to extract a bribe from me. The vibes from the locals felt weirder and more unfriendly than they had in the previous weeks, although this may have been my perception after hearing about Rebecca’s horrible rock attack.
Annoyingly my stomach was still giving me trouble and I had to keep stopping to use the toilet. Because this was all farmland there were no opportunities for “wild toilet”, so every time I had to go to a cafe, park up, order a soft drink, find the toilet/hole, use it, come back, drink the soft drink, pay, leave. All this time, especially with the typically slow Ethiopian service, started to take big chunks out of my buffer. The worst was when I tried to stop for lunch. I chose a crappy bar because it was in a “proper” building and I thought it might have proper toilets (it didn’t). When I arrived I ordered pasta but 45 minutes later nothing had happened. I asked the waitress about pasta but she had no idea, so I ended up paying for my drinks and leaving; nobody stopped me to say “your pasta is coming” so maybe I never actually ordered it. This wasted further time as I then needed to stop for bananas and biscuits to keep my energy levels up.
At some point during all my stops Rebecca, who had set off more than an hour later but was absolutely nailing it to try and catch me up, overtook me without either of us realising. By the time we did realise, she was 20km away and I was 35km away and there was only 90 minutes of daylight left. She needed to drop her (still sick) bike off with a mechanic in Addis the next morning as it was close to Ethiopian Christmas and she wouldn’t be able to the day after, so she committed to Addis and I decided to see where I got to by sunset. The traffic started to increase and it seemed like everyone was out buying their Christmas dinner, as there were a lot of chickens and sheep (some dead, some alive) strapped to various unsuitable vehicles. I didn’t fancy navigating a big busy city in the dark so I stopped, annoyingly, 15km short of Addis in a moderate but noisy hotel.
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