No longer a dream.

"It was suddenly not a dream any more, it was tangible"

(Philip Petit, Man on Wire, describing his feelings on entering the
Twin Towers)

Well yes you're right Philip and yes, it's been all too tangible. I've
had a fairly eventful day. The flight over from Joburg was fine. For
some reason it was crammed with loads of quite scruffy looking Chinese
guys who spoke no English. It was quite funny listening to the South
African cabin crew trying to communicate by just talking louder at
them (and I thought it was just us Brits who were supposed to do that)

Then made another mistake (perhaps we should start a poll on the blog
'guess which one of Steve's mistakes will eventually kill him) mistake
was I didn't have an address for my landing card. To be fair to me I
was not planning on actually staying in a building for at least the
next three days (unless you count a train as a building?) the
immigration officer was a proper old trout and kindly informed me that
the English deport people all the time (which I guess is actually
true) and so she would therefore allow me 10minutes to give her the
address and phone number to where I was staying or I was going back on
the plane. Bugger!
After some frantic txting (iPhone kindly decided It couldn't be
bothered to connect to the internet) I had a name and number of
somewhere I had absolutely no intention of ever staying and had also
never had had any contact with... luckily it seems my immigration
friend's intelect or persevereance (one or the other) didn't stretch
far as phoning them to check and I was through! Rob I owe you one!

Putting the bike together went fine. Bit of a rush job though and I
confess I have very little idea which things are in which of the four
panniers. This will have to change.

I then set out for the short ride to Windhoek to catch the train...
er... you think it's gonna be that easy do you? I don't think so
sonny! Yes firstly the short ride turned out to be 42km. I'd not
brought any water. I'd not put on any suncream (though as you will see
this rapidly ceased to be an issue) and I'd also not put on my padded
arse saving shorts. I would make a fine Shakleton or Heyerdal!

The ride was great though! Finally I was riding my bike in Africa! I
passed weaver bird nests in the trees, hornbills were swooping across
the road ahead in that distinctive flight they do, the dry grass
beside the road was almost constantly rustling with something startled
by my prescence and I saw plenty of Wharthogs almost two or three
every five minutes! Yes it was beautiful and the hills to my left
looked lovely in the setting sun... and that, my friends, was a
problem. The setting sun! As in the sun was setting! Southern Africa
of course is at the end of it's winter and the sun set at ten to six
when I was still 10km outside Windhoek. I cleverly had no map of the
city, I'd just been trusting the railway station would be signposted,
or that my fathers genes would lead me to it. Neither of these worked.
And about an hour after sunset my pedals decided not to either. I was
in a right pickle, and actually rather shi**ng it. I felt a bit like
one of the rather shortlived extras in Tsotsi. To be fair nobody tried
anything on. I didn't even get any non-fatal stab wounds.. It was just
that I was in a pretty rundown part of town with bored looking groups
of young men on each corner sitting on low walls, with plenty of open
patchs of unlit scrubby wasteland about. (It is almost a new moon at
present) To cut a long story short I phoned home (well my sister) for
the second time since lunchtime and got the number of the place I'd
been planning to stay enroute back from Swakupmond. By now I'd already
missed the train anyway.

So am I upset. Not really. I'm now a day behind schedule, but will
also now be able to get a proper nights sleep, charge my digital
menagerie and propely organise my kit (and sort those pesky pedals;
lucky that didn't happen in the desert!) and sofar none of my mistakes
have done for me so I'm rather pleased with myself!

I bid thee Adieu, till the next time.