Brooks Saddle

I have purchased a Brooks Special Flyer saddle, I have just received it yesterday and I can't wait to ride it. I also bought the brooks proofide wax to care it.

I have checked a few links about breaking-in the saddle. Very tensing how much care you'd think it needs, specially if you live in a place that you aren't sure if you can get the right material to protect your purchase. I personally have a relationship to my possessions, so i hate losing them or mistreating them.

here is a link i found to be very helpful about the topic:
http://www.bikeforums.net/archive/index.php/t-85300.html

and of course the famous Sheldon Brown link which discusses and explains the whole concept of leather saddles:
http://www.sheldonbrown.com/leather.html

Lazy

Back to work and Cairo. It's been two weeks now.
I have vowed to write a detailed review on the gear i have used. Been a bit lazy but soon i'll post it...

Wikipedia

Living the present

After 10 days of recovery from what was a major shock to me. I would say the negatives have sunk deep down, and now the positives are floating on the surface and are trying to take me and fly...

My trip had somehow spiritual goals, more than it was an adventure!

I'm quite grateful actually for Mo, for several reasons, I would of never been able to do it without him. He was there from the very start and his thoughts and inspirations made all this come true. Even if he couldn't make it, at least he helped in making it happen.

I haven't felt lonely one bit through out the road. I kept having this feeling that all this is mine, and mine alone! the mountains, the deserts and the sea. All these cars flying past me are just passers by but i'm to stay, this belongs to me.

I had this goal when i started the trip and it was that i have to enjoy the presence i have to live in the present. Because now is a gift and that's why they call it the "present".

It was funny that i even discussed it with Pascal, the swiss guy who was heading to South Africa. It is true we are programmed to worry about the future and evaluate the past whether it is good or bad and just drop the most important part of our life NOW!

I have caught myself several times going back in forth in my mind and leaving the beautiful camp sites i was blessed with. I just would tell myself could u please just enjoy this and drop all that behind you! it is a tough excercise but it is vital i believe.

Now i'm cycling Cairo, like a madman guess i'm addicted to just riding long distances, may be it helps me focus on the present more, i'm not sure.

Hope i find a good source of money very soon that will allow me to travel around. It's what i'm trying to figure out these days, my job barely gives me a decent living, not that i'm not thankful, but i just wish i earn what i deserve...

It's really tough living here and have different dreams than what the common people have!

Trip Pictures

Here is the link to the photos taken during the trip... Enjoy them :-)

The Egyptian Curse

I'm back home from my trip i had an amazing 10 days in the sinai, 6 days cycling to Neuwibaa, crossing 700km and rested for 4 days in the lovely camp Rock Sea.

Unfortunately because i'm an Egyptian, the Jordanian authorities refused to let me in their blessed lands, thus putting an end to the trip.

It's Dahab baby!

I'm in the city of Dahab today, i made almost 600km so far. I feel so refreshed and strong. Though i have some shoulder pain, didn't find the reason yet, tried to fix the shifters and the saddle, but nothing yet!

I wanted to post some pictures but unfortunately there is no memory card reader at the internet cafe where i am.

i booked a cheap room in dahab, 30 EGPs only. Took a shower and changed my underwear. had the same cloth for 5 days, crazy! i'm still thinking about staying here one more day instead of leavinjg tomorrow, don't know yet.

i love you all... :-) wish me luck

4th day trip to jordan

I've reached Sharm El-Sheikh today, this is the fourth day of the trip. It's amazing... plain amazing.... i will add more perhaps tomorrow, i'm very tired the road to sharm was a killer. I'm supposed to do less than a 100km tomorrow, so probably i'll be in  better state. Wish me luck everyone please, i love you all...

Cycling Ein El-Sokhna

Last weekend we did a last practice trip where we'd go out to a place 120km away from Cairo, about 140km from where we live, camp, cook and get the whole lot of the cycling-camping experience.

Unfortunately it was terribly windy. I mean it was so windy that no matter how hard you pedal you are barely moving, probably I was doing a 8-10 km/h it was badly inclined, and when there was a slight declination we had to pedal our way down or you'd fall off your bike!

We rested a bit in the middle of the road and thought that we should start looking for a decent camping spot, the wind has decreased a bit, but it was too late for us to try to reach Ain El-Sokhna specially it would be dark by then, and we didn't think it was a good idea to cycle in the dark!

I was fortunate enough to actually experience the famous quote of  "it's never about the destination it's about the road or the journey"

We had a fabulous time, Mo cooked us a great meal, it was so good to have a warm meal after a effortful day, slept for 11 hours and we slept like babies...

Here are some pictures, Mo has the rest, since he is the one with the pro cam :-)

                                            

From Cairo to Petra - inspirational video

From Cairo to Petra - inspirational video from ganzeer on Vimeo.

Sherif & I have been planning a cycling trip from Cairo to Petra for a while now. I thought I'd make a little inspirational video for us using footage I shot on some of our shorter bike rides using an ATC2k bullet camera from Oregon Scientific.

I illegally borrowed music from Tenacious D's The Road (for this non-profit video) since y'know... we're talking about the road.

The Suez Experience

So my first and only long distance (well sorta) cycling trip has been from Cairo to Suez. That's only 140 kms, but they're a 140 kms that happened under not so ideal circumstances.

First of all, I was scheduled to head out with my buddy Sherif at exactly 5 AM to catch most of the light while avoiding the blinding and blistering heat of the sun, but because my smart ass got me to stay up late (3:30 AM) at a friend's birthday party, I totally overslept, managing to barely wake up around 7:30 AM and finding several missed calls from Sherif.

I tried to call him back but got no answer, so I figured he either went back to bed or head out for Suez without me. I honestly thought chances were higher that he'd just went back to bed and sulked, but a call from Sherif around 8:30 informed me otherwise.

Overtaken by feelings of jealousy mixed with obligation, I declared I would catch up with him, without really asking how long he had been biking for, which I presumed couldn't have been for that long. So I head out after him on my own. The problem with this plan is that:

1. I had no bike racks or panniers or bottle holders (as opposed to Sherif), so I would have to carry my water, my tent, my change of clothes, all in my backpack.

2. I had no tools or spare tires in case of emergencies (also as opposed to Sherif)

But y'know what? I head out anyway. I figured I'd eventually catch up with Sherif at one of the rest stops along the way or something.

About a couple of hours into the biking though, over a phone conversation with Sherif I happened to discover that he had actually head out at 5:30 AM, easily over 3 hours ahead of me, and was already way past the 80 km mark of the road!

Basically, I was in mildly deep shit.

After biking for two hours already on the road, there was no way I'd turn and bike two hours back to Cairo, and I also knew that with Sherif being over 3 hours ahead of me, there's no way I would catch up with him, and I would be stranded if I merly got a flat tire. The risk factors were high, my back started to kill me, my inner thighs became growingly soar, and the slightest touch of the palm of my hands made me scream like sissy, but I was determined to get there anyway. However, I learned some very important cycling lessons:

1. Never ever carry any weight on your back. Bike racks with proper panniers are essential. All the weight should be carried on the bike and not on your body.


2. Biking gloves are essential.


3. Never bike for long distances during the day without sunglasses, especially if the sun is rising at the end of the road in front of you, and its the freakin' sun of motherfuckin' Egypt. Personally, I don't like super dark sunglasses that totally change the natural color spectrum of human vision. A slightly tinted UV protected glass will always get my vote.


4. Sun block if you dont want to lose your skin.


5. Biking shorts with padding for the ass and balls are very, very essential.


So yeah, I actually managed to make it around 9 hours later. But I had to cheat the last 30 kilos by hopping on the back of a pick-up truck because it was getting dark and I had no headlights (also very important), not to mention the whole sever pain part. One of the things that also put me behind was my water finishing a little early than expected, making me detour into the nearby Badr City to resupply myself with water, which took a bit of a while.

The good thing about the road Cairo-Suez road, although entirely uphill, is well equipped with a couple of gas stations and rest houses for necessary supplies.

Although this little trip had its hardships, I don't regret it for one bit and actually very much enjoyed it. Something about being on the open road on a bike puts you in a certain mindset that is very different from everyday urban life. I somehow felt a little tougher and more badass... and I really liked it.

Two weeks to go

Less than two weeks to go. We scheduled our trip to start on the 15th of November, 2009.
Since I, Sherif, have to go back to work in one month, so it'll be a 1 month trip. We will post as many videos and photos as we can, keeping the blog updated.

Mean while, I'll post some photos from a trip to Suez, 130km away from Cairo, to the East http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=29.907329,31.861725&spn=1.054684,2.469177&z=9

We camped and returned the following day.

I want to mention a few notes regarding this road, for cyclists willing to cycle it in the future.

1- Mind that the road is a constant inclination, since Suez is at sea level, meaning it is a bit higher than Cairo.

2- This is a desert road so after 80km with only 50km to go, there are no mountains only desert, so there is so much wind, and most probably it'll be opposing you. i had a very rough 40km.

3- If you are traveling in the summer, please have something to wear on your head, a cap or a helmet.

4- Carry sufficient water, and energy bars. Snickers did well for me!

5- There are several stops on the road, it is quite busy.

6- There is a nice lane on the way to Suez in which you can cycle safely.

7- The road is filled with big trucks

8- On the way back to Cairo,the magnificent right lane is filled with sand making it a bit harder to cycle. But as we usually do and look at the bright side of things, I was still able to cycle on it.

9- Suez has a ferry, for free, to carry you to the other side, which is the road to Sinai.

10- Suez is a very peaceful city, we easily found a nice camping spot in a public isolated park, and had an amazing noiseless sleep.

May be Mo will want to add some notes of his... till then enjoy the pictures...

Later on

The first post was about how all this began, obviously in the picture is the bike we bought, this in particular is Mo's bike.

Regarding the equipment, Besceletta were able to provide us with a good share of the equipment:
rear racks, rear panniers, saddles, and prop stands.
The rest we had to order from the uk and the states. I'm privileged enough to own a mailbox that ships stuff at low shipping rates compared to other couriers.

The other equipment are as follows:
Tubus Lowriders, Altura front panniers, Schwalbe Marathon tyres, Shimano pedals, Shimano cycling shoes, Altura cycling shorts, Eureka tents, Coleman exponent multi-fuel stove.

Thankfully we have an amazing Cycling Club, and recently I've been noticing that more and more people are cycling. Guess our generation can change things after all. So I got to join the cycling club with several trips inside the Cairo and one outside and this was my first 100km ride. Mind that i haven't been cycling for more than 10 years...

The cycling group is called Cairo Cycler's Club and they are found on facebook...

The picture is from the fayoum trip and In the picture is one of the moderators Mustafa Hussien, left, and Sherif Younis, right

The Gang

left to right
Mo, Martina(My Bike), Me

History

Well this started, 7 months ago, March '09 to be precise.

My friend Mo and I were talking about Martina Jisbrant, who was walking the El Camino de Santiago in Spain. Which is an 800km long famous Christian pilgrimage.

I was amazed by the fact that she's doing it. We discussed how cool it will be to do something like that. Mo said "well you don't have to go to Spain to do it... probably there's something to be done around here, in Egypt or the region"

The thing is that since we are Egyptians, we suffer from the fact that to travel to any country, wherever it is. We have to get a visa, from the country's embassy, which is a long tiring process, lots of paper work, you have to prove that you are coming back, you have to prove you have this X amount of money in your bank account... bla bla bla and all that racial discrimination we have to deal with because we are a third world country, and Europe or wherever, is our unseen Eden.

We started thinking if we can walk to Jordan perhaps through Israel or Palestine... Yeah why not! started searching a bit... We then came up with the idea of cycling... starting from Taba (http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=29.226493,34.741516&spn=1.061818,2.469177&z=9)
through Israel to Jerusalem, down to Eilat, Eilat to Petra.

This was the initial plan, we started searching the internet and found this website (www.downtheroad.com) They are an amazing couple Tim and Cindie Travis, who have been cycling the globe for 7.5 years, very admiring and inspiring. We learned a lot from their website, and in specific regarding the equipment, since we know nothing what the equipment was all about.

We live in Cairo, and Cairo is an anti-cycling city. In fact Cairoanians despise cyclists and always try to run them over. It's like fighting pagans in the old days.

The idea of cycling through Israel after some surveying seemed to be more of a dream, as we have troubles getting across the border to Palestine or Israel, specially from our side. So we decided to abandon the idea, and take the other route. Which is from to cycle to Neiubaa a few kms from Taba, take a ferry across to Aqaba in Jordan cycle to Petra, and then go the way back.

It sounded perfect and we were set.

Since we are living in an anti-cyclist culture then obviously we don't have proper bicycle shops or bicycle mechanics or anything related to decent cycling. Mostly are cheap children bicycles... So you can imagine how challenging was the challenge of searching for a bicycle was.

Thankfully, we have only one single shop which sells decent bicycles at very high prices. This shop is called "Besceltta" and if you are a cycling tourist and you happen to have passed by Cairo. This is probably your only stop for decent bicycle parts, just don't have high expectations.

So we went to "Besceltta" to our luck the owner was there. A very nice well spoken gentleman, and we started discussing with him the possibilities of supporting us with a bicycle that is capable of cutting a bit over 2000km, to Jordan and back. He was so excited about the idea and he gave us his full support. We ordered the bicycles "Gitane 300GTN" this is an entry level road bike, so i will never recommend it to anyone planning a cycling trip, but it's all we could afford, plus we'd still be equipping it with all the touring gear, but it has an amazingly good Aluminium frame, all the rest are just details that can be upgraded later on.

We paid almost double the bike's original price had to order it from France, waited for like a month and a half. Finally it has arrived and i'm the happiest person alive...