Through the desert

My mother once told me a story and for some reason it's been on my mind recently.

Back in the day they had these tent revival meetings where a traveling evangelist would come to town and preach to everyone. One of these preachers used to draw a crowd by promising that at the end of the sermon he would lift the heaviest person in the audience using only his teeth. I guess he had some kind of harness device which he used.

They had no TV in those days so he used to draw huge crowds and everything was grand. Then one day he tried to lift a 300 lb farmer and all his teeth were ripped from his mouth and sent spraying out into the first two rows of the audience.

My mother's stories all have a moral at the end. This story could easily be a metaphor but normally my mother's morals were more straight forward and literal. Certainly, I never saw my mum lift anyone with her teeth.

Anyway, I'm in a small town called Isyolo. It's in northern Kenya. From Ethiopia to here is a really bad dirt road and desert. It also has a reputation as pretty dangerous so it's a relief to be past that.

From here it's tarmac. The next milestone is Nanyuki just 80km away. The thing is that Nanyuki is at the base of mount Kenya and the elevation is 4000 m so it's climbing all the way.

There was a mouse in Awasa that destroyed my micro USB converter and makes posting blogs trickier. It sort of sucks to blog about stuff that happened a while back. I'm going to do it anyway probably. If anyone complains I will ban their IP address. No actually, I'm just playing. It's really encouraging to read everyone's comments and emails. Thanks people.

Blogging from Ethiopia

I've tried to update my blog many times in Ethiopia but this is the first time I've been able to. There is only electricity for three days a week generally. Only major cities have internet access. The internet access is very bad as well.

I'm safe and doing well. I'm in a city called Awassa. It's a really nice place about 500km from the border to Kenya. The plan is to push hard and cross the border into Kenya.

Ethiopia has a reputation for being a hard place to cycle. That's been true. But it has a lot of charm also. For the last two weeks no child has thrown a rock at me. The adults are great. The food is tasty. The cafes are fantastic.

Will block more later.