B is for Botswana and...

(We are actually in Namibia now but it has been a few days so here's a quick summary of our time in Botswana!)

...so does Boring, and Boils and Beans. Yes, after the initial excitement of the Elephant Highway, and seeing those magnificent elephants, the thrill factor went waaaay down and the riding became boring. In order to get us through this land of endless straight flat roads somewhat quickly, we were riding very long distances, on top of many other very long days in Zambia and Malawi. This led to boils. Stop reading right here if you are at all squeamish! I won't go into too much gruesome detail, and I probably don't have to tell you where exactly the boils are located, but I will say it involves the part of the anatomy which comes into regular contact with the bicycle seat. Big ouch. A big ouch that lasts and lasts, especially if you keep getting in contact with that bicycle seat. So although Wayne has been touching it out, I have been wimping it out and cut back a bit on the distances. So in the last 5 days I rode an easy 100 kms for each of 2 days, then we did the EPIC 207 km day, then the last two days I have ridden to camp from the lunch truck, both about 80 km days. I don't know if that is enough...but we have a rest day tomorrow so maybe I'll be ready for the 8 days of offroad riding coming up in the Kalahari Desert. We were all pretty excited to finish the 207 km day, that is the farthest I have ever ridden in a day!

Oh yes, beans. I just threw that in there because it starts with B and that was our dinner the night before the long day. Interestingly, everyone who set off hoping to finish the 207 km day did finish - maybe the beans should get some credit?

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