Distance – 72 km
Elevation gain – 1114 m
Time – 5 hr 30 min
Av heart rate -120 bpm
Max heart rate – 168 bpm
Level of fun had- Max.
The Blue Cross Day Five – from our Whitewaters bush camp to Mutare.
If yesterday’s ride was a cut and paste from the SAS selection course, today’s ride was a reminder why I love my mountain bike.
Looking on a map, you’d expect Mutambara to Zimunya to be randomly beige, but the bush and scenery was absolutely glorious, easily my best on Tour. It was plenty tough with enough soft sand to keep you honest and over 1100 meters of climb in just 70 kilometers. It was a good day to be alive and on the bike.
I enjoyed joyous reunions with every stranger I met. Your average Zimbabwean has to be the happiest and friendliest person out there, even though he has not a lot. Apart from a tiny 3 foot tall highwayman, aged maybe 6, who jumped out of the bush in front of me and sternly demanded he give me all his money! I gave him a packet of jelly babies instead and told him to pay more attention in his English language lessons.
But as we drove into Mutare, our pit stop for the night, the wheels came off our best day, almost literally. We turned into a city center service station to fill up and there was a dreadful sound of metal grinding on the metal, and our front left wheel all but fell off. The fuel attendant looked under the car and told me the CV Joint looked to be very broken.
It wasn’t the first thing that had gone wrong on the car. Earlier in the day, I carried out emergency roadside repairs to the busted console dashboard using only duct tape, barehands and my Allan Wilson education. I was fully prepared to roll under the car and get my hands dirty again but the attendant suggested that we limp 100 meters to Toyota Mutare instead. I am happy to support local industry, plus I was down to less than a half a roll of duct tape.
Being a Saturday lunchtime on a long weekend, Jenny and I were thinking that it was Blue Cross game over for us. And it almost was. Toyota didn’t have a spare CV joint in stock, and the soonest they could get one was Wednesday. Bugger. I put out an SOS to Brian James who said he knew someone at Victor Motors who might be able to help. Alas. Turned out the someone was away fishing for the long weekend and not taking calls. Another panicked call to Brian.
Long story short, Victor Motors came through for us big time. A farming customer of theirs in Penhalonga with the same model Toyota had likewise enjoyed a CV joint collapse 2 weeks earlier and had ordered 2 spare joints, 1 to fix his car, and 1 for just in case his other CV joint went. The said farmer was happy to help. Victor Motors drove to Penhalonga to fetch the spare joint, and then spent the next 4 hours supervising repairs in the Toyota workshop, and now my car is good like new. And our happy ending had more layers to it. Toyota don’t have a television in their reception area, so I wasn’t able to watch the All Blacks come second to Argentina.
Big thanks to Daniel Soma and Brian from Victor Motors and also Walter Sundayi and staff from Toyota Mutare.
And my apologies to the Toyota mechanic for when our kettle fell on his head, followed by the cooler box and then the kitchen sink, when he opened the back door of our car. Now I’m not for a second suggesting that loadmaster Jenny is responsible for the bomb blast chaos inside our car, but I do wish she’d take a leaf out my book the way I keep my bicycle neat and tidy and organized.
On the left, right next to where I keep my thumb, I keep my bell, then my GPS, then my phone holder, then my speaker, etc, etc, all in a line, all alphabetic. And likewise her driving. If Jenny drove over the lumps and bumps polepole slowly like me on my bike, then maybe the car would only have suffered imaginary bottom bracket bearing issues.
Tomorrow is the last day of the Blue Cross and the toughest, 78 kilometers with over 2100 meters of climb.
Until my last blog from Zimbabwe’s highest point, enjoy, ride your bike and be lekker.
Eric Chicken Legs de Jong.
* Names and images may have been changed for privacy reasons
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