Race Across South Africa, part eight

I was tired of being frightened of things that didn't exist, of things that hadn't even happened. My fear of being lost in the dark was not based in reality, and I knew that. "What's the worst that will really happen?" I reminded myself. As Liehann snoozed in Hadley, I studied the map by headlamp beneath my covers, tracing the dotted line as it contoured down a ridge, crossed the wide blue shading of a river, sliced across a spur, and then continued down the valley. The dotted line hugged the river around Osseberg mountain, which was lower than points on the ridge up canyon — possibly not visible from certain vantage points? I tried to imagine what this landscape would look like — the tight contour lines of cliffs, the steep side canyons ... should I count them? Could I count them? What looked like a trail on the map would look like nothing at all from the ground. I knew if I carried my bike, the odometer would be useless in tracking distance. I was tired of being frightened, so I just put the map away. 

We set out in the morning to cut through a wall of mountains we spent the previous day approaching, the Bavianskloof. It was incredible bike touring terrain — 400 meter drop followed by an "equally ridiculous" 400 meter ascent along the rippled sedimentary layers of redrock cliffs. The previous day, Anine showed me a tourism map that revealed a route to Cambria going the long way around on this scenic and fun road, but of course that is not the Freedom Challenge Way. I told Liehann I was getting to a point where I was questioning my life choices regarding doing things I really did not want to do because I'm in a race. Of course I do it because of the enduring rewards of overcoming my fears and weaknesses — but the fears and weaknesses of the Freedom Challenge were not relinquishing their grip, and I was becoming tired. 

 The long closed and technically prohibited Osseberg jeep track was about forty percent into the process of being entirely reclaimed by nature. Short sections were rideable, but much of it was not — at least not without taking a serious beating from high brush, thorns, deep erosion ruts, and hidden rocks. Liehann and I were always in agreement about playing it safe and hiked, hiked, hiked. The day began to heat up. I inadvertently chose a terrible bush to squat behind and ended up with seemingly hundreds of damn near microscopic (and yet oh so prickly) thorns inside my tights.

 Grumpy, I was. We arrived at an abandoned camp site and I sat down to eat a sandwich that Anine had packed for me — salami and cheese, and it was amazing. "I miss Hadley," I thought. "I should go live there." The track disappeared and the route across the river was far from obvious. The map directed us to "continue on to easier river crossing." The campsite sat about fifteen meters above the river on a vertical bluff. I wasn't sure exactly where we were on the map, but I thought we needed to continue up river before finding a lower crossing and looping back around. Liehann argued that the crossing must be somewhere below the campsite. I insisted we needed to go up river. Liehann conceded this time, even though he was certain of his assessment — and also right.

We hacked through thorns along a faint animal track. Tiny prickly pear-like cactus lodged in my shoes and lower leg. I scanned the other side of the river for the supposed old wagon trail that was supposed to climb over the spur, but saw nothing. Features that I thought would seem obvious from the map were anything but on the ground. Every peak looked like the one we needed to go around, every side canyon like the possible main river valley. It wasn't just that I lacked adequate orientation skills — although, alas, this was partially to blame. I did have a map and compass and the rational capability to use deduction to assess my position. But my creeping fear created an irrational but debilitating disorientation. The canyon might as well have started spinning.

I continued dragging Liehann through the brush. The sandy river bluff only became steeper, the main river channel wider. We started arguing. "Fine, we'll go back to the campsite," I huffed. We picked our way back until we saw a steep gully beneath the trees. "That's possibly a way down." It involved lowering our bikes off a six-foot dropoff and picking our way down smaller boulders, but we did at least arrive at river level. Would there be any track to pick up on the other side? How would we find it? If not, could we hack our way down this valley? Just schwacking through no more than 300 meters of brush had taken a half hour and left us thorn-pricked and exhausted. There was no way that 15 kilometers of this was possible, let alone plausible. And even if it was, how would we keep track of the exact location where we needed to leave the river and hack our way toward civilization? Liehann remained optimistic, but I could only see the world spinning.

"I'm thinking about just going back to Hadley," I announced to Liehann. He thought I was joking. I was not.

It was there, standing bewildered on a gravel bed in the middle of the Groot Rivier, that we heard a loud, "Oi!"

We turned around to see a solo cyclist with a bike on his back. We hadn't seen another rider in the Freedom Challenge since we left Richard in Elandsberg five days earlier, and suddenly, here one was, at the exact moment I was feeling most bewildered and lost. A knight in dirty bicycle kit — Marnitz Nienaber.

Marnitz is a hardened Freedom Challenge veteran, having completed the route across South Africa five times before this year. He started the race on June 15 — five days after us. He looked surprisingly fresh, although his legs were painted with fresh blood — hinting that he probably rode most the way down the Osseberg track through the punishing brush.

"We wondered when you'd catch us," Liehann called to him, referring to the fast guys who were racing this course for time, not just a finisher's blanket.

"Do you know where the track goes, from here?" I called out a little more timidly. I was surely happy to see Marnitz, but at the same time, strangely embarrassed.

"I will show you," Marnitz called back. "Wait there."

 Marnitz hoisted his bike and crossed the first channel, then took the lead through thick reeds at the edge of the river, arriving precisely at the head of a faint double track. I thought that would be the extent of Marnitz's guidance, and now he would race on ahead. But it was a major help. At least we found the track, for now.

"Follow me, I will show you where to go," he said. We mounted our bikes and raced after him up the steep track, with no more regard for the thorn bushes or cactus spikes. If I got an unsealable puncture I was just going to ride the flat. I did not want to lose Marnitz.

At the crest of the climb we looked down the river valley. "That is where you need to go, around there," Marnitz said, pointing at a peak that I presumed was the Osseberg.

I thought that was it, but we still raced after him down to the river bank, where he ducked through the branches of a fallen tree and stopped at a wall of reeds. I could just barely see over the river, but there was nothing there — just more walls of reeds, and more toppled trees. "Look for the breaks in the reeds? See them? It is here," Martinez said.

"No," I thought. I didn't see anything remotely resembling a break in the thick vegetation that stretched about two feet over my head. But I hoisted my bicycle and thrashed through the green confusion, waded across the knee-deep water that was so murky it was difficult discern which way it was flowing, and bashed through more reeds to the other side — where we arrived at a faint jeep track.

I was beside myself. How did he find that? What did he see? "Do you even need a map anymore?" Liehann asked him.

"Not so much," Marnitz replied.

 I kept waiting for Marnitz to ditch us, but he would wait at crossings, and hiked behind us up the steep brushy slopes where the abandoned track cut across river bends. He would pick what to me appeared to be a random spot to cross the river, bulldoze through the reeds, and still find the exact spot where the track met the other side. The barely-there track was surrounded by thick thorn bushes and tangles of fallen trees, revealing what would be a painful, if not impossible, bushwhack, for anyone who couldn't locate the track. "Thank you for helping us," I said several times. "Really, thank you."

Later, I learned that last year, Marnitz encountered another group in the Osseberg, including a woman named Avril. He thought Avril was traveling with the two guys, but actually she was alone — she had ridden alone for most of the race. Marnitz went on ahead, and the guys also made their way forward without Avril. She found her way to the sixth river crossing, and then sent a text message to the race office that they didn't receive until the following day: “Now I’m scared. Alone in Baviaans valley and don’t know which way to go, please can you help..?”

Avril ended up spending the night near that crossing. She built a fire and waited patiently. Later the following day, she heard the sound of voices — and tearfully met up with a group of riders who started several days after she did. Despite their fast pace, she resolved to stay with them through the remainder of the race, and finished with her group of "rescuers." Avril is no doubt a tenacious woman, but I got the sense that Marnitz felt a little bad about leaving her behind in 2013. Her ordeal became our good fortune. Liehann believes that we would have eventually found the way on our own, but I'm not so optimistic. We're both grateful for Marnitz's help on that day.

Though catered to us, the pace was fierce. We didn't eat, we ran out of water, hours went by ... it didn't matter. As we worked our way down the valley, the track became progressively worse, until it was almost entirely overgrown everywhere, and we had to find our way around enormous tree tangles brought down by floods. Give this valley few more years of growth and flooding, and it's hard to imagine how this route would even be passable by seasoned veterans, let alone clueless rookies. Marnitz seems to share this belief. He snapped a photo of one of the downed trees.

"I want to show David his highway to Hell," Marnitz said. He put his camera away and turned to me. "What do you think of the Osseberg?"

"Well," I stammered, looking up at the sculpted cliffs. "It is a beautiful canyon."

"There is nothing beautiful about this place," Marnitz said.

Picking our way out of the canyon, we learned how strong solo racers like Marnitz climb game fences — he hooked his bike on the bar across the top, climbed over, straddled the bar, swung his whole bike around, and dropped it on the other side. I tried to imagine what it must feel like to be that confident and strong. We arrived at Cambria before dark, but only just — 54 kilometers in ten and a half hours. Although we had seen him on the road just a mile back, Marnitz did not arrive until a half hour later. His rear derailleur was busted, and the chain broke. He went to a farmer to ask for makeshift parts he could use to fix the damage. "If he doesn't have it, then it was not to be," Marnitz said.

I felt a sinking guilt — that perhaps the extra effort and bashing to help Liehann and me might just cost Marnitz his race. Although his plan had been to shower and go, Marnitz stayed to fix his bike and had dinner with us. He told us about his sleeping system — in order to make the race more challenging this year, Marnitz was spending most every night sleeping outside. I told him about my experiences in the Iditarod.

"That sounds like a real adventure race," Marnitz said, which I admit sparked a bit of pride. I respected the hell out of this guy.

Marnitz was able to fix his broken bike and was off in the night, like a phantom. Liehann went to bed, and about a half hour later, the peloton arrived — Steve, Di, Richard, and two others named Con and Coen. The were all buzzing from their successful portage through the Groot Rivier gorge after starting in Bucklands early that morning.

I joined in the joyful recounting of the day, but I admit that anger lurked in there as well. We had been incredibly lucky with Marnitz's timing and willingness to help, but what if we hadn't? You wouldn't have to venture very far off the track to not hear others go by; no one else goes down there anymore; they might never find our bodies. This was, again, echoes of that irrational fear calling out from the confines of grateful retrospect. But after two weeks of Freedom Challenge I was beginning to wonder what I had *really* gotten myself into. That valley was ridiculous, it really was. Which I guess is the point — to learn the way, to graciously embrace the help of others, to accept that maybe you couldn't have done this on your own the first time around, but now you're older and wiser.

But still ... what had I gotten myself into? 

Race Across South Africa, part seven

Saturday, June 21. Winter solstice — the darkest day of the year. Grootdam was one of my more restful stops on the Freedom Trail — multi-course meal, a high-pressure hot shower, and rare success in sleeping through most of the night without any nightmares about losing the track. We even slept in — the proprietor told us the farm gate didn't open until 6 a.m., so we opted for a 6 a.m. start rather than climbing a gate first thing in the morning. Still, when I woke up in the morning, my right ankle was stiff and mildly swollen, with purple bruising appearing near the edges. Definitely sprained, but at least it was just sprained. 

Morning brought a steep climb out of a sandy valley, followed by a cross-country traverse along a desert ridge. This traverse, which seemed to start and end nowhere, was inexplicably marked by white painted stones — which, given the more likely possibilities here, make for a much-appreciated trail.

The white rocks guided us to a rim before plummeting into a gorge down a steep, boulder-clogged gully. Just as quickly, the sandy desolation of the Karoo transitioned to this strange, almost lush climate with thick brush, palms, and cactus, along with a harmonious chorus of bird calls and barking baboons. Liehann and I both independently likened the ambience to that Jules Verne story, "Journey to the Center of the Earth," about a group who descend lava tubes into a prehistoric world populated by dinosaurs.

It almost felt as if a velociraptor might leap out of the bush, and Liehann was thrilled with the adventurous atmosphere of the place. But we were both struggling physically — me with my sore ankle, and Liehann with his swollen shin. The best way to get down the boulders was to hook the bike's saddle on my shoulder, but this seemed to place more painful pressure on the sprained ankle no matter which shoulder I hooked the bike on. Progress was extremely slow — well under a kilometer an hour — and about midway down the canyon I hit another bonky wall. I was just extremely hot (probably more of a result of poor thermoregulation than an actual high temperature) and out of sorts. We sat down for a break and I ate a bag of crackers and three salt tablets, which seemed to help.

Even still, despite the good night of sleep and continued snacking, my energy levels did not improve. We needed to take a detour into the town of Pearston so Liehann could pick up a bleed kit that his parents had mailed to him — in another frustrating mechanical, his rear brake stopped working. As we rode through town, I started pointing out convenience stores so we could stop for a cold drink and ice cream. That's when I learned Liehann was actually in a big hurry — our next support station, Gegun, was only supposed to be a lunch stop. I was having a rough morning and up until that point thought Gegun was our day's destination.

I mounted a protest. Our hike down Struishoek portage was much slower than it should have been, and after the detour into town, it was already 1:30 in the afternoon. At best it would be 3:30 by the time we covered the 30 kilometers into Gegun, and after that we only had about two hours of good daylight left. The next 52-kilometer leg included four kilometers of portaging and 30 kilometers of intermediate technical riding, through an area where navigation looked like it might get tricky. "We're going to ride most of that after dark," I argued. "If we're going to do that we might as well just start planning now for spending the night out. We should at least pick up some extra supplies here in town."

Liehann thought I was being too alarmist on the matter, but he also seemed concerned about even a remote possibility of spending the night outdoors. Although I didn't feel fully prepared for a night out, camping was not my main concern. I had a good bivy sack and warm layers, as well as firestarters, and I've spent a few cold nights sleeping outside with less than adequate gear, so I felt I had the past experience to mentally deal with a night out in the frigid South African bush. My main concern was feeling horribly lost for an entire night, a mental blow that I wasn't sure I could handle. I no longer cared about our twenty-day race plan — only about managing my fear-of-being-lost issues. "I don't mind doing the work," I said. "I'll ride all day and all night when we get to the longer road sections. I could go through the rest of this race perfectly happy if we don't have to do any more night navigation."

Liehann pointed out that we'd have to make a new plan if we stopped early. Although the Freedom Challenge is a nonstop race, most participants treat it as something of a stage race with stops at specific full support stations. Intermediate stops didn't usually accommodate overnight stays. Changing the schedule might mean reshuffling plans for more people than just us, but my concerns about sleeping out eventually swayed the argument in my favor. Liehann called the race director and worked out a schedule that would put us at intermediate stops for the next three days before a really tough portage into the Baavianskloof.

The day after winter solstice, I woke up feeling markedly better. The long stop at Gegun had done me some good — we installed a new chain on my bike, bled Liehann's brakes, ate two dinners and breakfast, and recovered both of our injuries enough that most of the swelling had gone down. The four-kilometer portage was actually quite easy, following a steep track. At one point Liehann was a few minutes behind, and I stopped at an intersection to scrutinize the map. There were bike tracks going off in both directions, and the cues seemed to direct us to the right. But after mulling it for several minutes, I was convinced we needed to go straight.

When Liehann arrived, he was convinced we should go right. He and I occasionally had debates about directions, and I usually conceded. But this time I was certain my way was correct. "I knew you were going to argue with me," I pouted, then pointed to my map. "See, here, this side trail goes straight up these contour lines, while the correct trail wraps around the hill. Here is where I think Bugs and Allen came back down; see their tracks curve like they turned right on this road, not left from behind."

Liehann was still skeptical, so I requested we just ride down the hill and look for another intersection. I careened down the steep slope until I came to a Y junction, which was marked by a rare "bokkie" — a Freedom Challenge trail marker, of which there were a few dozen on the entire 2,400-kilometer course, always at random intervals and never in the most confusing spots. But this one mattered. "It's here! It's here!" I called out. A minute went by, and still no Liehann. Finally, I started yelling louder. "Bokkie!" I screamed. "There's a bokkie down here!"

Finally he rolled down the hill. I was offended. "You weren't going to come down," I teased him. "You didn't believe me."

After a steep descent we climbed again to a game gate, and then launched into one of the most incredible segments of the entire trip — 15 kilometers of gradual but sublime descending on a rugged jeep track through the Voelrivier gorge. As the layered cliffs steepened, I stopped to take a photograph of interesting water markings on the wall. It was just then that I noticed what I thought had been part of the rock formation, starting to move.

Giraffes! I crept forward as a herd of eight to ten gathered and crossed the track up a hill to our right.

I watched them gallop up the slope, necks bobbing gracefully as their long legs swept over the grass in a beautiful angular motion. It occurred to me that my only reference for giraffes were the animals I'd seen in small enclosures at the zoo — standing still. I had never seen one run. It was enchanting.

The herd gathered again higher up on the hill. I could have watched them all day, galloping through the grass and grazing on trees in this deep and isolated gorge. But our modified race plan meant we had a long day ahead, so we continued pedaling along the dry riverbed. "If we left Gegun last night we would have ridden this section in the dark," I said to Liehann after apologizing for my alarmism. The portage hadn't been tricky, so I felt guilty about stopping short the night before — but at the same time, what was our purpose on the Freedom Trail? To finish, or to embrace every new day as a gift? As the days went on, I admit, I cared less about the finish — my reason for not wanting to quit was not wanting to miss a single kilometer of this incredible journey. "In the dark, we would have missed this."

We were descending deeper into a low-elevation region of the Karoo where a high concentration of game animals reside. More game meant more posted signs warning about buffalo, hippo, and rhino, more sightings of kudu and wildebeest, and a lot more game fences. Sometimes we found creative ways to get around them — at this gate, we were able to squeeze ourselves and our bikes through a narrow opening above the lock. Others forced us to go over the top, and later that day, a tall gate with spikes prompted us to take the wheels off both bikes to more easily lift them over. These fences also sparked more stress than was warranted. But the problem was never knowing how many were ahead, or how long they would take to surmount.

We navigated our way along the dry edge of a dam and crossed into Addo Elephant National Park. We saw no elephants in this corner of the park, but we did cross into another sort of Lost World.

The jeep track along a dry river bed had been abandoned many years ago, and was almost completely reclaimed by these thorn bushes. Called the Karoo thorn or Aracia karoo, its conspicuous spines are sharp enough to impale skin, as happened to my poor calves on two occasions. They also find their way into bicycle tires, sticking out like toothpicks bubbling with sealant. You can't pull them out, as the holes they create are on the margins of being too large to re-seal — you simply have to keep riding and hope the excess thorn eventually breaks off, leaving behind a suitable plug. Despite extremely cautious riding and carrying our bikes through the worst patches, Liehann and I must have picked up a dozen or more of these thorns. I'm still afraid to open my bike's tires and see what lurks inside, but the tubeless system worked wonderfully. I never had a single flat; the most I had to do was top off air pressure.

Our new schedule necessitated another 130-kilometer day with lots of tough riding, and we arrived late in Kleinpoort. We met a nice couple who worked as bird researchers and birding guides who were staying as guests at the house that hosted Freedom Challenge racers. They hadn't expected our arrival, so we felt guilty for bursting in on them after 9 p.m. We made our dinner from a box of emergency provisions provided by the race — ramen noodles and crackers. The man gave me some of his leftovers — plain boiled cauliflower, carrots, broccoli, and corn on the cob, apologizing that there wasn't more. I was so thrilled to eat a big batch of vegetables that I declared it my favorite dinner in days.

The following day, I think Liehann still had ambitions to make up our lost half day. We made quick work of the thirty kilometers into Bucklands, and even after enjoying a leisurely breakfast of lamb shepherd's pie that was supposed to be our dinner the previous night (they actually had been expecting us), and despite a harsh headwind and plenty of climbing, we made also made quick work of the next 42 kilometers to the intermediate stop in Hadley.

As we got closer to Hadley, I checked my watch. 1 p.m. I slowed my pedaling, trying to stall as I watched Liehann race ahead. Although we agreed to the plan to stop here, I thought he probably wouldn't be thrilled about stopping this early in the day when we were a half day behind schedule. He might think there was enough daylight to take on this next portage. I strongly disagreed. Although I'd been admittedly too timid about the section after Gegun, this one was truly alarming — twenty kilometers of steep ascents and descents followed by fifteen (or more, it was usually more) kilometers of river valley bushwhacking that sounded even trickier than the Vuvu Valley, and likely a lot slower. These directions told us to look for indentations in the reeds instead of a trail — indentations made by who? The two guys who were in front of us? There were supposedly 11 river crossings "that look wide but are usually never more than waist deep and there are no crocodiles." They way they made an effort to point out there were no crocodiles made me wonder if there actually were. Either way, I was in near panics about the prospect of taking on the Groot Rivier gorge in the afternoon.

I came up with a plan to convince Liehann to stay in Hadley. We'd get a super early start — 4 a.m. if necessary, to get through the first twenty kilometers before sunrise. Then, if the river bushwhack went well, we could ride late into the day to click off 130 total kilometers into Damsedrif. And if it didn't go well, we'd at least have an entire day to hack away at the 50 kilometers into Cambria.

The family at Hadley also hadn't expected us — despite filing our plan two days earlier, no one had been forewarned. But Anine and Bennie welcomed us with open arms anyway, and we enjoyed a long afternoon rest getting to know them better. I had tea with Anine, called Beat, took a hot shower, actually shaved my legs, and almost felt like a regular person again. I watched the sun set over the beautiful sandstone cliffs behind the house, and realized I needed to relish this sanctuary of warmth and kindness. Tomorrow, we would descend into Mordor.

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.