Race Across South Africa, part six

Ten days into the trip, it was already becoming difficult to remember any other way of living. Events that occurred just days before would slip into corners of my memory that already seemed dusty; Pietermaritzburg was another lifetime. It's interesting, the way these kinds of journeys slow time down. You step outside your comfort zone, and suddenly every minute has meaning. New sights, sounds, physical sensations and emotions are bombarding you with such ferocity that the only way your brain can process it all is to narrow your perception to a single moment, and then another. I'm accustomed to passing time in large chunks; I work a project, click on Facebook, and suddenly an hour is gone. Days pass in comfortable routine, weeks go by, years stack up, and suddenly events that happened a decade ago seem like yesterday. The Freedom Trail has the opposite effect; I arrive as a child, gut my way through adolescence, and grow old and weary but wiser, all in the span of three weeks. It's a compelling — and enduring — extension of life. Intensive bicycle touring and endurance racing are not something I could do with every moment of my existence, but I cherish each opportunity for these concentrated life experiences. 

 After arriving late in the evening in Romansfontein, Steve and Di elected to sleep in the following morning and aim for a halfway point during the day. Liehann and I left with Richard just before dawn, and made it about two miles when Richard's rear derailleur lodged in the spokes. He whipped out his emergency tool kit to replace the bent hanger. The derailleur was also bent, causing the chain to skip off the pulleys. He used zip ties to try to squeeze the cage back together. I watched this crude field repair and wondered how it would fare for another ten-plus days and over a thousand kilometers of rough terrain. But that's just what you have to do out on the Freedom Trail; there are no bike shops out here, no overnight deliveries. Some people, like me, get really lucky with their gear and make it through most of the race with only a broken valve stem and self-sealing tire punctures. Some people, like Liehann, have to ride the entire Freedom Challenge with a locked-out fork and a bad front position, among other mechanicals. Like any endeavor this long, luck plays a large — I would argue leading — role in whether or not you make it to the finish.

 The light was beautiful this morning. I took a lot of photos that don't have much story to go with them. What I remember is being quite cold. This morning wasn't even as cold as most; I had seen temperatures as low as -10C on my thermometer, after sunrise, in past mornings.

 This morning was probably closer to freezing or even above. But bodies don't regulate temperature consistently in the midst of hard efforts. Even though we were resting adequately, each day was very taxing, and less energy was dedicated to thermoregulation and healing. Cuts and bruises I'd sustained a week or more earlier hadn't even begun to clear. My arms still felt numb and sore; I wondered how much muscle repair was even happening. But it's interesting that bodies just know what to do, instinctively, with a finite amount of processed energy. I didn't need to heal bruises; I needed to turn pedals.

 We began the long climb toward the Aasvoelsberg, where the land owner appeared to have a sense of humor. (And a certain disregard for accuracy. I am aware that there are no tigers in Africa.)

 Our cues gave us an option of either going cross-country across a flat veldt around an outcropping, or following a track a hundred meters up and over the top. I somehow talked Richard and Liehann into climbing the track. My nightly reoccurring dream had shifted to nightmares about "losing the track." In my dream, we'd be riding along a faint track in the dark, and suddenly it would disappear. I'd frantically look around, but the track would be gone, and I'd be hopelessly lost. My fears of being lost were becoming more pronounced every day, and I'd gotten to the point where I the prospect of losing my bearings ignited irrational terror. I'd complain to Liehann about how stressed out I was, and he'd remind me that I had no reason to be stressed out. Getting lost actually isn't the end of the world. "I know, I know," I'd agree. "I need to reel this in." But how?

 Did I mention the light was beautiful on this day? We arrived at a saddle and I traced my beloved track where it stretched across a spine and disappeared into a hidden valley.

 We launched into an exhilarating descent off the face of the world, 700 meters of elevation loss on a rugged and rocky trail.

 We landed in a particularly remote-seeming part of the country, and connected with a dirt road where the bicycle tracks of the two Freedom Challenge racers who rode through one day earlier were still perfectly defined in the sand. No one had traveled this way since. "It's very isolated here," Richard said.

 We climbed up a long, isolated valley. Just went I thought we had reached the edge of the known world, we crested a saddle to our first view of the Karoo.

The high deserts of the Karoo are sometimes referred to as the cradle of humankind. It was here, near a town called Hofmeyr, that one of the oldest known skulls of a modern homo sapien was unearthed — 37,000 years old. The skull's features suggested that the ancient man looked more like a modern Eurasian than a modern African, supporting the theory the modern people started here and branched out, eventually edging out other hominid species of the north.

 We appropriately stopped for sandwich snack at an overlook to take in this desolate and enchanting landscape.

 We reached Hofmeyr around 2 p.m. and stopped at a pie shop that Liehann had been raving about. I'd couldn't get too excited about a meat pie because I was already fighting daily indigestion from consuming more mutton in one week than I had in my entire life before Freedom Challenge. I ordered lasagna, as it seemed to be one of the more carby items on the menu, but what arrived was a single pasta strip draped over a pile of ground meat. Either way, it was difficult to enjoy my lunch because it was late in the afternoon, Night Was Coming, and we had a tricky portage to contend with right at the end of the day.

 The uphill side of this portage was a cross-country bushwhack, and the directions one receives is to "head up between the nek (saddle) on the left and three koppies (a word that effectively means "hill" and is just as generic) on the right." Really, it could mean anything. Daylight was fading fast as we pushed our bikes through shrubs and thorn bushes toward random points on a ridge that Liehann recognized from his 2011 ride. He seemed confident in our direction but I was skeptical and nervous. Skies faded from pink to maroon to dark purple as we crested a broad saddle and found the ruins noted in our cues (relief!) and a track (oh joy!)

Richard was leading and quickly left the track — I'm not sure he noticed, but I was watching the faint indentations in the grass like a hawk. I called out and reeled the boys back to the ruins, where we followed the track in the opposite direction. It was almost completely dark, but we were beginning to climb more steeply when we should have been descending. I checked Ingrid's compass, and sure enough, we were marching in the wrong direction. I called out again.

Liehann and Richard were reluctant to go back at first. Liehann thought the track might loop back around; we hadn't seen an arm going off this trail anywhere since we passed the ruins. My irrational fear was beginning to take hold, and a cold chill replaced my blood. It was just like in my dream — Night Was Coming, the track was disappearing, we were hopelessly lost. I started shivering. "Let's go back to the ruins," I pleaded. Even if we didn't know where to go, I just wanted to know where we were.

"We must get this right," Liehann said tersely. "Otherwise we'll spend the whole night bumbling around out up here, which people in this race have done."

As we traced the track back, Liehann noticed a narrow singletrack dropping off a stream embankment, which we followed downward as it slowly became more defined. My compass confirmed a correct direction, and Richard and Liehann had become confident enough to start riding their bikes. But the damage to my morale had been done. It's tough to explain. I knew we'd be fine, but the phobia of being lost had taken hold, and I couldn't stop shivering. This was always one of my major fears as a child; I'm one of those who held onto traumatizing memories of screaming in a grocery store after losing my parents. Fear of being lost continued to haunt me as an adult, and I developed my outdoor lifestyle with an emphasis on knowing the way — signed trails, races with marked courses, explorations with a GPS making a digital bread-crumb trail, GPS tracks, and trusting others. With apologies to Liehann and Richard, I didn't have any of that in the Freedom Challenge. This forced me to face this fear in ways I never had before. Even when I was alone in the frozen wilderness of Interior Alaska, I always had this sense that I could find my way. Staring out into the stark, unbroken darkness of the Karoo, I couldn't simply put faith in my maps and compass and companions, which were all perfectly capable of showing the way. No, I could only stew in this frantic phobia that I might just wander forever and never find a light.

Of course, we found the farm house of Elandsberg with no troubles. I'd let stress drain all of my energy reserves, and had a difficult time going about my daily chores. Like most rural farm houses, Elandsberg was a large, early-twentieth-century building with high ceilings and no heat. Actually, just about nobody in South Africa heats their homes, even in regions where nighttime temperatures drop to -10C and below. We'd always arrive warm from our efforts, but then a slow chill would begin to set in that never went away. I'd shiver through dinner, take a blissful warm shower whose effects faded all too quickly, occasionally steal extra blankets if there was an empty bed in the room, and still feel chilled in the night. I'd look forward to riding my bike, to feel warm again.

But the family at Elandsberg was very nice. My tights were accumulating a large number of holes, including a gaping tear beneath my right butt cheek. The woman offered to sew it closed for me, and her husband offered Richard a beer, of which he enjoyed a few rounds while they watched soccer on television. Richard was also fighting a cold, and announced he planned to sleep in, rest during the day, and wait for Steve and Di to catch up. Liehann and I were down to a group of two.

 The first leg of the following day was 67 kilometers that we bashed out in almost no time. We made one mistake that cost us about 45 minutes, when we crossed the wrong river. Temperatures were still below freezing, so we opted to take off our shoes before wading into the icy stream. After about ten minutes of riding on the other side, things were not looking right. We located the correct track on the other side of the river, across a gorge where it was impossible to cross. Argh. Back to the first crossing, off again with the shoes. This is the kind of lost I don't mind — it's just inconvenient, it's not terrifying. Daytime mistakes never bothered me much. Maybe I really was simply scared of the dark.

 We were beginning to cross into wildlife preserve country, and the four-foot-high sheep fences were replaced with ten-foot-high game fences. We had to cross many of these, and while some gates were open, many were locked. This one swung open, but it did contain an unnerving sign — beware dangerous buffalo and rhino. Our cues confirmed this warning — "Beware rhino." Happily we saw no rhino. Rhino sightings are a lot like grizzlies — amazing animals, but I'd rather not see one from the seat of a bicycle.

 Quick lunch at Stuttgart, and we tried to keep it short because the second half of the day was 62 kilometers into Grootdam. Liehann seemed confident we'd bash this out quickly as well, but as I studied the maps I saw a saddle crossing at 1,800 meters — about 900 meters higher than where we were. Almost all of those 62 kilometers were labeled as intermediate or advanced technical riding (in Freedom Challenge, for us, advanced always meant walking.) And there was a very tricky seeming portage late in the day. I *really* didn't want to go for it, but we were both far too healthy to call it a day at 12:30 p.m.

As I walked down the stairs outside Stuttgart, a piece of concrete broke underneath my right foot, rolling the ankle badly as I topped over on the grass. A sharp, intense pain gripped the joint, followed by that sinking feeling of dread ... I sprained my ankle. I'd traveled well over a thousand kilometers in Freedom Challenge, riding technical terrain and scaling steep mountains and rocky cliffs with my bike, and this is where I injure myself — the steps of a lunch stop. I crouched on the ground for several minutes as the pain rippled through, and then stood up to assess the damage. The ankle was very sore and starting to swell, but I could move it without issue. "I can still walk," I announced to Liehann.

 We followed a gradually deteriorating track up the kloof (canyon) until it was too steep and overgrown to ride anymore. Liehann was grappling with a leg injury as well — his lower leg between his shin and his ankle was red and swollen. He called it a shin splint, but it was lower on the shin than the overuse-related shin splints I've had in the past. We speculated it might have been caused when he bashed his leg with a chainring while lifting a bike over a fence, but either way, it made walking painful for Liehann. And over the past few days, it had gotten worse. We were both quite gimpy and slow, hobbling painfully 3,000 feet up this steep track. But what a view ...

The descent on the other side was an awesome reward — loose but nicely graded, plummeting into the tear-inducing chill of a shaded valley.

It was a beautiful evening of riding, but Night Had Come by the time we arrived at the start of the day's final portage. This ten kilometers through the Grootdam Game Farm included nine gate crossings, and a number of spur trails jutting off in all directions. I was convinced it was going to be super tricky and that buffalo would probably trample us in there, but as we stood at the entrance, a man drove up. He told us Grootdam was his brother's farm, that he'd call to let them know we were on our way, and that all we had to do was keep going straight through all of the fences. "You can't get lost up there," he assured us, which actually did make me feel a whole lot better.

We still took our time with it, stopping at every intersection to scrutinize the cues. When we reached the first tall fence, it was locked. I was bewildered. "How, how do they expect us to get over this?"

This would be the beginning of our development of techniques for scaling ten-foot fences with bicycles. For this fence, Liehann climbed to the top and straddled a thin mental pole. I handed my bike up to him, which he balanced as I climbed up and over the fence to grab the bike from the other side. He tried to muscle it over the top, but with little to leverage on, he had to engage brute shoulder strength to swing it over the bar and lower it to me. He was out of breath and seemed rattled after that effort, and we still had to do his bike. As I prepared to climb back over the fence, we both noticed a spring connected to the lower part of the gate. I jiggled the attachment, and sure enough, a small door had been installed in the gate, and it was open. We both laughed at our unnecessary effort.

"Well at least we know we can do that if we have to again," I said.

"We need to figure out a better technique," Liehann said. But at least we knew to *always* check to see if a gate had an opening before climbing it. 

Race Across South Africa, part five

Earlier this year, shortly after I arrived in McGrath during the Iditarod Trail Invitational, I spent some time pondering what it would be like if my effort didn't end there. After 350 miles of strenuous sled towing, with my swollen feet and aching shins that wouldn't even let me run the last three miles into town, what if I had only been a third of the way done? Not even? I watched Tim, Loreen, Beat, and Donald ready their supplies for the thousand-mile journey to Nome, and tried to conceive not feeling a warm rush of relief or accomplishment ... instead, just the same fatigued urgency of a race morning, cramming down mancakes to fuel something much bigger.

Granted, the Freedom Challenge is not the Iditarod, and I arrived in Rhodes feeling much more fit than I did in McGrath, minus a fully functioning set of arms. But the parallel remains ... Rhodes was the finish line for many, and there was an air of celebration that I couldn't take part in. Bruce and Ryan's family members came out to see them finish, and I sat down to have a drink with the group before the banquet dinner.

"How can you just keep going?" one man wondered. "Day after day?"

"Well, you know, you start to develop a routine," I answered. "The first week is always hard, but then it becomes your life. I don't think you actually get stronger, but it feels that way — it becomes your new normal."

Liehann had been looking forward to Rhodes for days, because Rhodes is where he would pick up his new fork. His old Reba had reached the point of being completely bottomed out and locked. Not only did he have no suspension, but he was permanently stuck with an aero position  — we called it a "rigid lowrider." His hands were already almost completely numb from the odd pressure points, and this new fork promised the relief he craved.

Or not. As I enjoyed a relaxing afternoon chatting with families of the Rhodes racers, believing Liehann was outside installing the fork, he was actually back in frenzied phone call mode after he discovered it wasn't the right model. What arrived was a tapered steerer fork, and what he needed was a straight steerer. It was the wrong shape — there was no way he could make it work.

He held out hope that he could still have this wrong fork returned and the right one delivered farther down the trail, but the tiny town of Rhodes was the only mail stop for many days, and he still was having trouble reaching the right people. I could tell he was disappointed as we sat down to dinner to cheer for the Rhodes racers as they received their finishing prize — a small herdsman's whip.

"Why don't we get a whip?" Liehann wondered out loud. "We finished the ride to Rhodes too."

"Do you really want to carry that thing all the way to Cape Town?" I asked. "Anyway, this isn't our race." This is something I feel strongly about, actually — if you sign up for the long haul, you better be ready to hold out for the long haul. There's no such thing as a halfway finish.

Our morning out of Rhodes was much like every other morning — alarm blaring at 4:30 a.m., piling on layers, cramming down a peanut butter and honey sandwich. I'd been up much of the night with indigestion after the rich dinner at the hotel, and was already missing the simple pumpkin, plain rice, and potatoes of the villages. We shared a room with Monday starter Mike du Toit, who was battling a nasty chest infection and already spent one layover day in Rhodes. He rolled out with us in the morning, wheezing heavily, in temperatures of -8C (17F.) Brisk, but lovely. There's few things I relish more than a clear, cold morning, and I have to say that it was a treat for me to enjoy pleasant winter temperatures (as opposed to the wet winter storms that are possible here) during a month when I'm usually baking in California. For many South Africans who live near the coast, however, sub-freezing weather is somewhat foreign. High pressure systems and clear skies meant this year was colder than most, and there were several riders who withdrew from the Freedom Challenge with flu and respiratory infections. Mike was one of the first. As we climbed the first hill out of Rhodes, he started gasping so loudly that I stopped and turned around to make sure he hadn't collapsed.

"I can't do this," he coughed. "I have to go back."

And that was that. Poor Mike.

I was having a most wonderful morning. Skies were clear, the light was rich, and we were riding our bikes. It felt like it had been a couple of days since we'd done that. Long dirt road climbs and frigid dirt road descents. Bliss. Call me a roadie. Fine, I'm a roadie. This is one of only two selfies I took during the Freedom Challenge. I wanted to document how happy I was. See the happy? (Note: It is still very early in the morning.)

Photo by Liehann Loots

This day had a lunch stop at a farm house called Chesney Wold (all of the farms in South Africa have individual names. When I was studying the maps before the race, I mistakenly interpreted these as small towns, but they're not. They're usually just a single-family farm house, a few barns, worker houses, and lots of open space.) Liehann remembered this stop from 2011 and was particularly excited about it, for good reason. When we arrived, five or six neighbors were there to greet us, there was a homemade lasagna (!), Coke, and fancy decorated cupcakes for lunch, and a tour of an antique-filled farm house with a room that contained an enormous cap collection. I don't remember the exact number of caps, but it was in the multi-thousand range. As we rode west, we were leaving behind the village-dotted hills of the KwaZulu-Natal province and delving deeper into the high deserts and wide-open farm country of the Eastern Cape. Beyond Lehana's Pass, the culture was very different, but the hospitality was still wonderful. In many ways, this region is similar to the American Midwest. Locals will go out of their way to be friendly and accommodating to strangers.

We were now traveling with Steve, Di, Richard, and John — quite the cheerful clan. Liehann and I were ahead of the others in the afternoon, and took on the tricky Kapokkraal portage on our own. A large group of baboons was perched on the ridge, barking in our direction, which made Liehann nervous. I guess the habituated baboons near cities sometimes steal food from people, and have, Liehann warned, "very long teeth." He grabbed a large rock as we passed, just in case.

We nailed the nav on our own. Maybe it wasn't that tricky of a portage, but it did require a cross-country traverse, locating the correct saddle to cross, and tracing a "wagon trail," which, like most "wagon trails" on the Freedom Trail, was just a figment of someone else's historic knowledge. I was feeling triumphant at the bottom. We passed below the abandoned Spitskop farmhouse, where our cues said a traveling Italian artist had painted murals on the walls. There was so much daylight left in this flawless day that we decided to go check them out. We explored the long-vacant house with its peeling wallpaper, eerie little girl's room, rusting appliances, big holes through the walls, and partially mummified sheep carcasses (!) until we were thoroughly creeped out, but we never found the murals. Actually, I'm skeptical they exist — perhaps it's just a joke inserted into the cues for novice Freedom Challenge riders with far too much time on their hands.

We left with new fears that the Blair Witch was coming to kill us, but enjoyed a late afternoon of fun riding along sandstone cliffs. We were in a new geographical region as well — the Stormberg, or "Storm Mountains."

We joined back up with the group at the farm house of Slaapkranz (I'd always think of Beat yelling out these Afrikaans names with an exaggerated guttural German accent as we worked on the maps together.) There was another tricky portage right out of the gate the following morning, and Steve was eager to take it on before dawn. I was dubious, because by agreeing to their strategy, I also had to agree to their pace, and my arms were still sore and numb. If I couldn't keep up ... and my track record hadn't been good ... then I risked becoming lost first thing in the morning.

The morning was cold again, probably even colder than -8C, and I scrutinized my map through a thick vapor of nervous exhalation. The compass I brought from California had been rattled to death on Black Fountain; Ingrid graciously gave me hers after she finished in Rhodes, and I was trying to get a sense for reading this new compass — the window was much more scratched, and the arrow seemed more sluggish. I pointed it into the darkness, but it was useless because I couldn't see anything. It was like getting a bearing under a blanket. You know you must move in a westerly direction, but there's a damn mountain in the way. How to actually get over that mountain is the important part.

So we blindly followed Steve and Di as they confidently marched up the tiger line of the mountain, a segment that gained 350 meters in less than two kilometers (about 1,200 feet in a mile.) I think they may have been carrying their bikes; I couldn't see. I was still trying to push my anchor, with arms so weak the muscles didn't even have energy to feel a burn — they just smashed against the handlebars like useless blocks of rubber as I used my shoulders and back to force forward motion. I started to fall behind. I tried to push harder. Then my arms failed, they actually failed, falling away from the handlebars altogether as the bike shoved me backward and onto my side. I was laying in a bush with my bike on top of me and I could hear Liehann calling from somewhere far above. "Are you all right?"

"I'm okay," I called back weakly. "I just need some time. Just give me a little more time."

Liehann engaged his helpful technique of hanging back just enough to stay in my sights while keeping the main group of fast portagers in his sights. It worked well. I finally made it to the plateau in time to hear Steve give his directions for a row of mountains running north ("And now, we must go over there.") We followed him into an incredibly fun rollercoaster descent on a bulldozed track with enormous speed bumps. John had fallen back as well, and we'd learn from Richard that he turned around and went back to Slaapkranz. John also was fighting a flu and couldn't muster the energy for the climb. He would eventually withdraw from the race as well.

The day's second portage started at kilometer eight, and gained 400 more meters over five kilometers — more friendly than the first, and probably mostly rideable for a strong and fresh mountain biker, but it still had enough steep grades on loose terrain that all of us pushed. I finally decided my arms were a liability, and set up my map board so I could lean into the board and push with one shoulder while resting my arms limply on top of the handlebars, occasionally repositioning my hands to steer. It seemed to work; I kept a better pace. The top had a beautiful, sweeping view, followed by a near-vertical descent on extremely loose dirt and stones. It was barely walkable; one tiny slip put me on my ass, and even Di took a hard fall. By the time we reached the farm road at the bottom, it had taken us nearly six hours to cover about 23 kilometers (just 15 miles!) of distance. Ah, Freedom Challenge.

The afternoon was quite enjoyable — warm sunshine, and lots of short but steep climbs and descents on scenic dirt roads. We ended up with about 100 kilometers on the day into Kranzkop, and most of the details of this part of the day are fuzzy to me now. I admit, for me, the navigation aspect of the Freedom Challenge caused a lot of stress and became more mentally draining as the race progressed. Any time there was an easy nav section — often a series of roads that only required watching the odometer for turns — I took the opportunity to shut my brain off and just enjoy the ride for a while. It was a nice respite, but it's true that in the end, the tough portages were the more memorable and enriching experiences.

Day 9. Wednesday, June 18, I believe. By this point, we were swiftly losing track of the days. Liehann often thought we were days beyond where we actually were, and would fret about bumping up against the 26-day cutoff. "We're still on pace in our race schedule," I'd argue — although it's true, both of us had forgotten to print out the 20-day race plan that Liehann and developed, and had pretty much forgotten what we actually needed to do to stay on pace.

The morning began with an easy portage across a veldt — which is a South African term for a wide-open shrubby area or grassland, best I can tell. There were always a bunch of fence and gate crossings in this farm country, and I wasn't getting better at them. The gate in this photograph was easy, but usually we had to climb onto thin wires while gripping gaps between the barbs. I'd hand my bike over to someone and then hoist myself awkwardly over the wire, hooking my second foot and usually snagging my tights on some barbs before plopping down like a sack of sand on the other side.

"I just can't watch you cross gates like that," Liehann said. "One of these times you're going to rip your tights or break your ankle."

"I'm a really awkward person; I need three-point contact," I'd shrug.

By early afternoon, the west wind started cranking again, with fierce gales blowing right in our face. After a long climb followed by rolling descents into a valley, it was all I could do to hold an 8-kilometer-per-hour pace on a flat gravel road. Our lunch stop was at kilometer 50, and Steve and Di arrived about a half hour after Richard, Liehann, and me. Steve announced he was "shattered" and didn't think he had the stamina to complete the second half of the day. This was often his reaction to the long road sections. It seemed strange, because Steve was a lion on the portages — tiger line, no problem. Strenuous technical descents, he was gone. But on the roads, he seemed tired and miserable. I found this interesting because I was having the opposite problem. Not that I was miserable on the portages, but I struggled so much. And yet, I was still strong and fast on the roads. It caused me to ponder how much my attitude was affecting my physical performance — that maybe I didn't have to struggle so much on the portages, that maybe I could turn this around by engaging the power of positive thinking. Meanwhile, when it came to long road sections, we'd often end up an hour or more ahead of Steve and Di at the end of the day.

Richard, Liehann, and I stuck together for the second half the day. Richard is a British gentleman in his fifties who has lived in South Africa for a couple of decades. Typical British, he is incredibly polite and strong as a bull. We formed a paceline and Richard and Liehann took turns pulling into the brutal headwind. I had an occasional brief turn, but Richard usually ended up just returning to the front after a few minutes, and did the lion's share of the pulling. I have relatively little experience with pacelines and was skeptical it would even help, but Richard was an excellent peloton manager — directing us into a diagonal formation when the wind swung to our sides, and working to keep the pace brisk and efficient.

The day, like every day, was full of endless climbs and descents, and in the afternoon we crossed over another steep portage, passing by stone ruins from the Boer Wars and dropping off the face of a cliff through a boulder-tumble gully into a railroad yard. This is the site of the Battle of Stormberg, which was a rout for the British after a badly timed march put troops in a trapped position down in the valley to be mowed down by the Boer from up high. There's a parallel in there somewhere for the Freedom Challenge, I think.

The sun went down, but we somehow picked our way through a maze of sandy farm tracks after nightfall, and arrived at Romansfontein after 137 kilometers of fighting either fierce wind, cross-country portages, or darkness. "This is your hardest day," the proprietor at Jenny's Cottage had told us during our lunch stop. "It's 130 kilometers. If you're strong, and you guys seem strong, you can start doubling up now and reach Cape Town in 18, 19 days no problem. This is the hardest day."

Of course, I didn't believe that for one second. 

Race Across South Africa, part four

Pulling into the Vuvu school, we saw another five bicycles parked outside. Still reeling from my glycogen crash, I just blinked in confusion as Di laughed. "What's this? Looks like a party!"

Four riders from the Monday start group were there, as was Ingrid, the woman racing to Rhodes who started on Tuesday with us, and who I thought was far ahead. A man directed us into a darkened room in the school — like most rural villages, Vuvu had no electricity or running water — where the group was gathered around a small table, telling war stories. The lively conversation was a little too much for me; I had to step outside for some air. Nightfall came fast, like a cold fist over the plateau, plunging the little village into total darkness. Tonight, more than any night yet, I wanted to be alone. It's difficult to explain. I did enjoy the social aspect and camaraderie of the Freedom Challenge, very much so, but my introvert reserve was drained. I had no energy left to invest in this evening, and yet there I was, stuck in a small room with ten other people. 

I probably seemed antisocial that evening. I apologize for that. Eventually the outside chill set in and I returned to the school. I took up a quiet spot in the corner of the room, and treated my wet and chaffed feet while the group told their own stories of the Vuvu Valley, of getting lost on Black Fountain, of spending the night in a hut after being warned by a 12-year-old girl that "you can't be out here after dark. People get murdered here." Eventually my stomach settled enough that I was able to eat some nuts from my supply box, and then dinner came out. For eleven hungry bikers it was a relatively small portion, and by the time I made my way to the table, the chicken pieces and potatoes were gone. I took a heap of rice with thin gravy and felt grateful for that. First world cliches aside, it's hard to ask for more in a place where you see so little. 

After dinner, a woman directed Liehann and me to a circular hut down the street where we would spend the night — somebody's home, temporarily vacated. I asked Liehann where the residents went, but he didn't know, either. The hut had two neatly made single beds and an oil lamp. I asked a little boy about the toilet, and he walked me the rest of the way down the street to a crudely constructed outhouse — basically, a pile of logs that I couldn't quite discern how to sit on or squat over. We had traveled through many villages over the past five days, and it was interesting to actually step inside of one. I had a similar impression to the villages I visited in Nepal three years ago — lifestyles are simple, and hard, but fulfilling, too. But of course I don't know. I can't really know. 

We set our phone alarms and joined the group for breakfast at 5 a.m. The light dinner didn't exactly restock my empty furnace, and I awoke feeling lousy — throbbing headache, raw stomach, still no energy. Breakfast was very thin porridge and a boiled egg, but there was lots of steam bread, and I tried to cram down what I could. The group all took off while we were still packing up, but I was happy to let them go. I already told Liehann that I didn't want to chase anyone up a mountain today. I could do Lehana's Pass, but it would have to be at my own pace. 

The haul over Lehana's Pass ascends more than 1,000 meters in five kilometers — 3,500 feet in three miles. It sounded like a steep hike before I realized how difficult it would be to haul a bike, and the climb out of the Vuvu Valley ushered home the daunting reality of the task. Di and Steve planned to take a race-sanctioned long way around Lehana's Pass on roads, and based on how poorly I'd fared on the bike-carrying portage the day before, Di recommended I consider this as well. But Lehana's is an iconic part of the Freedom Challenge, and I had this sense that Beat would not forgive me if I opted out of the hike.

It was a stunning morning, with rich winter light saturating the dry slopes of the Drakensberg. These are the "dragon mountains," sleeping peacefully with lungs full of fire.

The climb started out not so bad. It was steep, but "wheeling" the bike was doable, and we kept a steady enough pace that we actually caught up to the group of five — John and Richard, Annie and Stewart, and Ingrid. Just as I started to feel comfortable, a heavy breeze picked up strength. By the time we reached the ridge, the wind had increased to gale force. It blasted along the spine with a deafening and ominous roar. Two shepherds were huddled in a squat stone hut, their fire nearly extinguished, and we kept on climbing. 

As the ridge narrowed, the battle become fierce. Rocky outcroppings provided temporary wind respite to balance the physical challenge of bike-hoisting repetitions. But saddles between the rocks were wide open to an intense crosswind. The persistent roar was so loud that shouting was useless even standing within five feet of Liehann. Gusts sounded like a freight train approaching in a tunnel — and ignited a similar fear. Wind speeds are always difficult to gauge and often exaggerated. Indeed, Richard guessed the gusts exceeded 130 kilometers per hour. I don't think quite that, but I base my guesses on past experience with winds in Juneau. There were plenty of times back then when I ventured out in winds that were measured and documented by a nearby weather station, and I began to detect noticeable differences in my ability to stay upright in a 50 mph versus a 60 mph wind. Based on those experiences, my guess for Lehana's Pass would be steady winds of 50-plus miles per hour, gusting to as high as 70 mph at times. Hurricane force.

Photo by Liehann Loots

It was all I could do to stay upright. I eventually decided it was better to walk windward of my bike rather than leeward, to prevent a gust from sweeping the bike into me and knocking me over. As I trudged upward, a particularly strong gust blasted both wheels off the ground, lifting the entire bike into the air like a sail, and knocking me off my feet. The wind continued to hold me down like an invisible board as I thrashed beside the overturned bike, struggling to stand up. 

As we got closer to the pass, I could see the "line" to the summit — a steep slope cut by only a thin ribbon of a sheep trail — hardly a platform at all across the intimidating grade. It looked like one mis-step thrown by the wind could start a long tumble down the mountain, and my knees went weak.

"I'm thinking about turning back," I told Ingrid. "Not to quit, just to take Steve and Di's route. This seems exposed. Dangerous." 

Ingrid shook her head. "It's not dangerous. Just walk with your bike on the outside. If you lose your bike ... then just walk." 

Near the pass, the sideslope wasn't as steep as it had looked from below, but the wind was more fierce than ever. Gusts were so strong that each time one hit, all of us simply crouched down with our bikes turned over, waiting for the blast to pass. John and Richard appeared to be having the time of their lives, howling into the gusts and crouching down to film the action as Annie and I fought our way toward the camera like television weathermen in a hurricane.

At the pass, our work was far from through. We still had two kilometers to push into the wind along the narrow ridge, a farm road to find, another pass to reach, and then a thirty-kilometer ride into Rhodes. Still, the mood was jovial at the top. "I've never experienced wind like that in all my life," Richard said.

We worked our way along a stream with snow clinging to the banks and thick ice in the waterfalls. It was a reminder that there's often snow up here, and I pondered how much tougher that climb would have been in snow. However, if given a choice between a foot of snow and a 60 mph wind, I'd be torn — and probably pick snow.

Liehann made me walk fifty meters up the road on this wind-blasted pass to take this photo. I was quite annoyed about
it at the time, because I just wanted to get the hell out of there. But it is a fun photo, with his puffed-up coat. 

The worst part about the wind is that it didn't even begin to let up when we finally reached the gravel road. It was blowing from the direction we were riding, and the headwind was so fierce that even long descents felt like climbs, and many of the climbs we had to walk. As we neared a plateau that was the highest point on the Freedom Trail — 2,600 meters — the unobstructed wind pummeled us from the side. I was so fed up with pushing that I experimented with leaning as far as I could into the wind and riding at an unnerving angle, just for the privilege of staying on my bike. A gust grabbed the front wheel and sent the whole bike — and me — careening toward a steep drop-off to the left. I corrected at the last second — with the wheels scraping that precarious edge, and heart racing as fast as it had all day. Who knew road riding could be so treacherous? How many of these last thirty kilometers would I have I to walk?

Finally, a reasonably long descent put us at a low enough elevation that the wind became at least manageable. We rolled into Rhodes in the mid-afternoon, and certainly could have done worse. It was a tough day, charged with adrenaline, and it took a few hours of recovery to realize that my arms felt completely dead. Like two over-tenderized lumps of meat, dangling uselessly at my side. Even reaching over a counter in the kitchen to grasp of mug of soup caused a near-failure in the forearm muscles, and I almost dropped the mug.

This seemed like a potentially major physical set-back, but what did I know about it?