Last weekend we had our annual men’s conference in Watamu, near Malindi. Reini Schmidt and I had planned for a long time to ride down on our motorcycles. We even got some radios for our helmets so we could communicate. (By the way, those are very cool, and I am not sure I want to go on long rides without them.)
About a week before the trip, the whole family was sick. It was a really tough flu. Somehow I avoided it, right up until two days before. Tuesday night I had 3 layers of clothes, and 2 blankets and I was still shivering. I got very little sleep that night, so I stayed in bed on Wednesday.
Thursday morning at 05:00 we got moving on our bikes. The darkness and slight mist combined with oncoming headlights made for an interesting first hour and 15. After that, it turned out to be a wonderful trip. The road is pretty nice most of the way, and the number of trucks and buses that tried to kill us was at a minimum. I mentioned that next trip I would like a bag of oranges or water balloons to huck at the windshields of the oncoming vehicles that used our lane to pass in spite of seeing us coming. I guess they assumed we would move onto the shoulder.
Just before the halfway mark we went through Tsavo. There were at least 50 baboons walking up either side of the road, it was almost as if their bus had broken down and now they were walking to the nearest petrol station. At the Tsavo river we got a good look at the modern railroad bridge, made famous by Col. Patterson and his maneaters. We then met up with our chase vehicle in Voi. We tried to enter Tsavo East National Park, but there was some talk that motorcycles were banned in the park in the Act that established them. Kenya is very sensitive with their national parks because they are a huge industry. They bring in more money than anything else. So the concern with motorcycles is not the safety of the riders (from the aforementioned lions) but noise for the animals.
It turned out well anyway as we headed down to Mariakani and took a dirt road that bypassed all the traffic in Mombasa. I turned on the helmet cam for that section (videos to follow). We slowed at every intersection and usually got 4 or 5 arms pointing us in the right direction without asking a word. We made it back to pavement south of Kilifi and headed to Malindi, eventually ending at Watamu and Turtle Bay. In the end it was about 600km in 8.5 hours with about 1.5 hours of stops. I felt tired, but great. God spared me the full force of the flu for a day. The day before, and the day after were bad.
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