Mulungushi Damn

“And in last place in the Mulungushi Mountain Biking Challenge, crossing the finish line in a truck with a time of 5 hours and 23 minutes, Tommy Lobben and Bryan Giudicelli.”

This was the last sentence of the emcee’s results speech in front of all 38 racers, including women and children, and the various spectators that came to be entertained by the race that “kicks the ass of the expat mountain biking scene in Zambia.”  Commence my first 15 minutes of shame since being in Africa as Tommy and I became exhibits A and B for the viewing pleasure of the spectators.

Tommy is my boss at GRS and my former teammate at Dartmouth.  He has been in Zambia for 2 years now so he’s been showing me the ropes around Lusaka.  He introduced me to a futsal (5 v 5 outdoor soccer) team that we now both play on with two other American expats who moved to Lusaka after graduating college to start a Zambian-run and operated cycling company.  Zambikes is a very cool organization that offers jobs, business experience, and cheap bike options to Zambians (and because nearly no one has cars here, affordable bikes can greatly improve lives, especially outside of Lusaka where even one bike for a whole village can offer previously unattainable things like healthcare, easier access to water, etc.).  As one of the main sponsors of the Mulungushi MTB (Mulungushi Terrain Biking) Challenge, Zambikes was allowed 2 racers to represent the company at the event.  Since Dustin couldn’t find any experienced bikers to fill the extra spot, Tommy and I accepted the challenge, knowing that it came with a weekend of camping lakeside at Mulungushi dam- a beautiful man-made lake about 3 hours outside of Lusaka. 

We decided to share the race-load knowing we lacked the mountain biking experience and fitness to attack this 40 km “doozy” of a course alone in the middle of the African bush, about 60 km away from the nearest town.  We decided he would take the first 10km, I would go the middle 20 km, and Tommy would take us home for the final 10 km.  Easy enough, right?

We woke up early the morning of the race with our sites set on a share of the thousand dollars of prize money that was available to winners of the different categories.  Our excitement grew when Dustin pulled out two bike outfits that were as tight and bright as possible.  And he set us up with Zambike’s finest bright-yellow mountain bike.  We looked good so there was now no excuse to lose.

And since there was no separate category for people splitting the race up, we were entered in the standard adult male category and figured this was easy money.  We were sure our life experience as competitive athletes would outweigh the lack of mountain biking experience and we gave each other an excited high five as I hopped in a car headed to the 10 km checkpoint and Tommy got ready to set off on our road to cash. 

The first rider came into the 10 km checkpoint at about 40 minutes.  He wasn’t Tommy.  The first woman came into the checkpoint at about 52 minutes.  No Tommy.  The first pre-pubescent child came into the checkpoint at about 1 hour 3 minutes.  Still no Tommy.  At about the 1 hour 40 minute mark Tommy furiously pedals into the checkpoint with no bike seat alongside a man who looked like he had hung up his athletic boots a long time ago.  The only person keeping these two from being in dead last was the only woman entered into the 50+ category – and she wasn’t far behind.  I quickly shifted my mindset from visualizing being in a heated battle for first place to the reality of being in a heated battle for last place.  As the mechanic quickly got to working on the broken seat, Tommy quickly recounted the comedy of errors of his last hour and half.  By his own account in an email he sent to his family and friends he says, “I use the first 20 minutes or so to figure out the gears, which is my way of saying that I was in high gear pedaling ferociously for no reason until I couldn't breathe. I'm sitting middle of the pack when a strap on my helmet breaks, and it's suddenly flapping in my face as I'm cruising through untouched African bush, not safe. Fix it, am on my way, probably in ~30th place (and I had just passed two preteen boys that had fallen and were too pudgy to get on their bikes again). About an hour in I start to feel great as the trail flattens out, under power lines, through villages, wind flowing, until I realize that I haven't seen a trail marker in about 25 minutes. At the precise moment of realization, the trail banks downward steeply and I start MOVING.  Too excited at this point to think straight, I decide to just go with it until I see the trail dead end ahead, and as I break, the bike seat (which dustin had "adjusted" right before take off, sabateur!) completely becomes unhinged and I start swiveling around like an idiot. So now I'm stuck at the bottom of some ravine, with a broken bike seat, in the middle of nowhere. Suddenly I hear the sound of bike gears clanging and have the fleeting hope that maybe I took some shortcut by accident! Instead it's just a South African biker, Ernest, who also took the wrong turn but was kind enough to help fix my seat (he brought tools of course) before we set off backtracking, up that huge hill. Eventually we find our mistake; right as that wonderful exhilarating down slope started, there was a sharp left turn uphill where the trail was.”  

When the seat is finally “fixed” by the mechanic, I am in 36^th place with only the aforementioned 50+ woman hot on my back wheel.  I set off, racing for pride alone, not knowing that my own comedy of errors was about to ensue.

A couple Kilometers in, I’m feeling great as I blaze into 35^th place past the South African man only to be thrown back into 36^th place about 2 kilometers later as he pops out onto the trail in front of me just barely in my sights as he unknowingly has taken a rather sizeable short cut.  Even from a distance I could see his blissful naivete.  Just as I hurried up my pedaling speed to passively show him he had taken a shortcut, the seat came unhinged and I, like Tommy had done, started spinning like an idiot on the loose seat.  I had to stop to tighten the seat as best I could with my fingers, the only tools I had.  This became the recurring theme every half kilometer or so for about 3 or 4 more kilometers until finally I was passed by the only person keeping me from dead last place, the ~55 year old woman.  The next recurring theme for the next couple kilometers became me fixing my seat and racing by this woman only to stop again to fix the seat, with her moseying on by me yet again.  Finally, when she got sick of worrying about the dangerous passes that I would perform on this single track course, she gave me her tool that should have fixed my seat for good and told me to keep it in case anything happened for the rest of the race.  After I properly fixed the seat, the excitement to pass her once and for all overtakes me as I power up a large hill.  Closing in on her at the top of the hill, I change gears while pedaling as fast as humanly possible and the chain snaps off the gears and squeezes itself between the gears and wheel, an area so tight that it almost defies physics.  With nothing but a small bike tool in my hand and a confused look on my face, I tried to attack the puzzle that was this bike.  After 20 minutes of trying to yank the chain out, I decided that my only option was to pull the back wheel and derailer off in order to free the chain.  Being in a brightly colored lycra suit sitting cross legged in the dust in the middle of the African bush trying to take apart a bike with a tiny bike tool, I have never felt more out of place in my life.  Realizing that this was a record-breaking time in my life for ridiculous juxtaposition, I accepted this fact and laughed nearly the entirety of the next hour or so while I tried to fix the bike, knowing how futile my efforts were.  After making things worse and putting 2 more knots in the chain, I ended up just putting the bike back together without the chain and prepared myself for a long walk.

By my calculation, I was 10 km into my part of the race, which happened to be 20 km away from the start/finish line and in a loop race that qualifies as exactly the furthest point from a checkpoint or race official.  Awesome.  I looked around from the top of the hill thinking I would maybe be able to see something or someone that could save me from this walk.  No dice.   There was nothing but trees and unfarmed fields.  The good news was that my scan of the landscape also didn’t find any wild game animals.  At least I didn’t yet feel like this was the beginning of an episode of Discovery Channel’s “I Shouldn’t Be Alive.”  My only strategy available was to follow the trail and maybe start thinking about places to camp out for when it got dark.

(The Trail Map: Start/Finish line is almost all the way on the left.   I broke down at the furthest-most point on the right.)

About 45 minutes later, the trail led me to a hut.  My brief excitement that the occupants may be able to help me was stifled by the realization that A. there’s no chance in the world that a two-hut village that probably occupies only one family would have a phone, let alone even know what a cell phone was and B. there are 73 different tribes in Zambia who speak 73 different languages and although people in the big cities are familiar with a common language called Nyanja, there would be no use for the knowledge of Nyanja in the middle of the bush for people who only communicate with their own family members.

I soon learned that all my suspicions about this tiny village were true.  They had no phone, no knowledge of the Nyanja words I was speaking to them, and they were all just one family.  But, boy what a big family it was.  Immediately when the first man saw me dragging my bike down the path he shouted out to his other family members to come help me.  For the next 20 minutes I tried to explain to all 12 of them that the bike was not fixable but they wouldn’t stop.  I think it was a combination of their want to help, the language barrier, and the fact that my brightly colored lycra, bike chain around my neck, crooked helmet still on my head, and bright red exhausted African sun-worn face made me look like nothing less than an insane asylum escapee to these very secluded villagers.  I took the opportunity to sit down in their hut and play with their 5 new puppies that could have been no more than 3 weeks old until the mother came around and realized she didn’t want this crazy person touching her puppies.  I politely pulled my bike away from the crowd of twelve still hovering intently around my bike with no progress made.  As I started to leave I thanked the kids by allowing them to touch my hair because they were so confused why my hair was different from theirs.  Off I went for 20 more minutes before I found another village where nearly the exact same thing happened as the first village.  Two hours and three more villages later I saw a race Marshall in the distance standing next to a dirt road.  Thinking I had found salvation I jogged to the Marshall where I started to tell the story of the last few hours before realizing he didn’t have any idea what I was saying.  10 minutes into failed communication with this man, it became apparent that he was a local villager just hired for the day to tell the racers either, “Stop.  Car” or “No car.”  These are the only words he knew in English.  He had no phone and no idea how long until the next checkpoint.  Dejected, I continued on my way in the direction he pointed me across the dirt road and onto a single track into a forest on the other side.  Until a distant rumbling caught my attention and I dropped my bike and sprinted back to the road to try to hitch a ride with whatever vehicle was driving by.  I sprinted out of the forest and jumped in front of a huge truck, which screeched to a halt.  With only hand signals exchanged, I think the driver agreed to give me a ride so I hopped in the truck.  All I knew to say was “Mulungushi” and he looked like he knew what I was talking about so I felt somewhat comfortable.  More comfortable, I bet, than he did.  What would you think if you were him a white person dressed in a very tight bright yellow top and purple shorts jumped out of the woods with a helmet on (and no bike in site) asking for a ride?  Through hand signals and one word exchange dialogue, I found out he worked for a mining company and was hauling manganese across the country.  A short 15 minute drive later (what would have been at least few more hours of walking and possibly even a nighttime campout) and I hopped off this huge truck at the 10 km checkpoint where Tommy and the rest of the water point crew had just finished cleaning up and were about to set off to find me.  By Tommy’s account, “After 3 hours of natural silence, this is when this series of giant trucks shipping Manganese from the mines starts rolling through, throwing up dust everywhere. And of course as the last truck rolls up, it grinds to a halt, and out of the front seat jumps bearded Bryan in his cycling unitard, with a huge grin on his face.”

We drove back and found my abandoned Zambike in the woods, where the aforementioned marshall had found it and used it as a seat until we came back for it, and turned back towards the finish line where we crossed 20 minutes later in dead last place.  And so commenced our 15 minutes of shame as the results were being announced at the awards ceremony as we got back and we arrived just in time to hear, “And in last place in the Mulungushi Mountain Biking Challenge, crossing the finish line in a truck with a time of 5 hours and 23 minutes, Tommy Lobben and Bryan Giudicelli.”

That night, the exhaustion from the day took over and I committed a “Mazungu error” and fell asleep next to the lake with no mosquito net and no bug spray.  These pictures are the result.

… yes, those are at least a few mosquito bites on my eyelid.  Dom Wooganowski style.

And because it’s not a customary part of the culture to ignore abnormalities on another person’s body I’ve been fielding the question, “Oh God, what happened to your face?!?” a lot in the last couple days.  For the record, this is an estimated 800 mosquito bites.  No joke.

(Addendum:  Things could always be worse. http://boston.barstoolsports.com/featured/bike-rider-gets-his-ass-kicked-by-an-antelope/.  Thanks to Olsen for this find.)