The sun had set. My 'stop riding and camp' alarms had all gone off,
but today these could be ignored for a change, I had a buliding to
sleep in!
I'd been psyching myself up for at least three hours of riding in the
dark. I'm not sure why but I'd begun to mistrust the distances my
computer was telling me, in the end the computer turned out true to
it's word. Sorry computer.
So I reckoned I still had at least 40km to go when I saw a road sign
for the D1958! The what you say? Well this was a road marked on my map
and only 5km from the start of the 15km tarmac run into Windhoek! I
was 25km further than I'd thought I was!
The tarmac quickly materialised my speed picked up and soon after the
lights of Windhoek appeared! I'd been saving the lollipop I'd been
given earlier for just this moment. So I stopped to unwrap and eat it,
at last looking down on Windhoek, 300 metres of descent and 15km of
smooth fast tarmac road below me. It felt great. The city was spread
out below like you see in American movies (I think usually LA?)
So I started to roll and got into the first decent in tuck since
riding in from the airport so many days before. It was quite dark by
now and the air had become quite cold, but this was nice, I'd wanted
to be cold for some time. When I slowed I could hear cicadas all
around, but these were quickly drowned out by the wind rushing past my
ears as the bike picked up speed in the steeper sections (I later
found I'd reached nearly 60km/hr - which is probably a bit fast in the
dark on a heavily laden bike)
By now the Moon had become a half Moon was high in the sky and really
quite bright. It felt like a spot light above above me and cast a
sharp blue shadow on the road racing beneath me. Ahead the lights of
Windhoek grew brighter. Unless I looked up the moon was well out of my
field of vision and the brightest thing in the sky was Venus to the
east, hanging a few degrees above the city (no I wasn't planning on
sleeping in a manger). The other stars were also bright and on the
slower sections I could come out of the tuck and tried to locate the
southern cross (I assume it lies to the south? My knowledge of the sky
at night is weak) but the growing urban glare gradually enveloped me
and all but the brightest stars slowly began to disappear. As i
teached the city limits i whizzed towards a police road block they
looked a little surprised but waved me through. Before I knew it the
descent was over and I was at my stop for the night. It was time for
that beer!
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