The Long, Strange Trip

Annie and I told ourselves that we were going to bike from Mporokoso to Kasama at one point in time. We had to come in for our provincial meetings that were January 6 and so we did just that. It is a total of 200 km (130 miles) to make that bike trip. This is just like most exercise that I do. I'll lead a relatively sedentary lifestyle for months, and then all at once think I can tackle the world.
So at 5:00 am I woke up to meet Annie in Mporokoso at 7:00. We were on our way at 7:30 on the nose. Our plan was to bike as far as Devin's site in Kaoma which is 80 miles away and sleep there for the night. At about mile 50 I was pretty sure I was done for but we kept on trucking. At about 15:00 we had the good fortune of having the rains start. We were running a bit late though and had to keep on trucking. Finally at 17:00 we got to a small market about 5 miles shy of Devin's house and decided to stop and wait out the rains so we could warm up and rest. It was one of the most uncomfortable times of my life. We were completely soaked and shivering uncontrollably. Thank God Zambians are great people because this woman that was there got some charcoal and started a fire for us to warm up by and gave us some food. She has definately won me over and I plan on being a loyal customer for the next two years whenever I'm at that market. So after the rains slowed down to a drizzle we were forced to get back on our bikes and get to Devin's because it was going to start getting dark soon. We plugged along for the last stretch and arrived at his house just at dusk. so that was a good 12 hour day of biking I put in there.
The next morning the four of us that stayed at Devin's that night got up and were hoping to bike the remainder of trip quickly enough to catch the Rose Bowl. We left in plenty of time, but no more than a mile into the trip I looked down and saw that my back tire was completely flat. Luckily Devin was still behind me so I had some help because the other two just kept on biking ahead. Devin and I took off the tire and patched it and then continued on our way. That had set us back about 30 minutes so we were trying to make up for lost time. Not more than two more miles down the road did I look down and see that again the tire had gone flat. We pumped up the tire and thought that perhaps the small leak would slow down. Another couple of minutes biking and again it was a pancake. So again we patched the hole, waited a few minutes for the glue to dry and started off again. This time we got a few miles before it was flat again. We failed at successfully patching the hole one last time, so we decided that Devin should bike ahead to another volunteer's site about 12 miles up the road and get a new bike tube while I continued walking my bike.
So here I was, walking my bike down the middle of a gravel road in Zambia for 6 miles while he was so generously pedaling away to get the tube. I know it was 6 because I was keeping a watchful eye on my odometer the whole time. Eventually I hailed a big truck that was driving by and got them to pick me up and take me to where Devin was going. I met up with him and replaced the tube. By now we were at the time of kickoff for the Rose Bowl and were just hoping to catch the second half because we were only a couple hour bike ride away at this time. I rode for about an hour before we were lucky enough to catch transport passing us and made it into Kasama in time to catch the last 6 minutes of USC blowing their lead to Texas.
So 17 hours, 6 liters of water, 3 flat tires, and 130 miles later....we were there. I'm really looking forward to the bike ride home. I figure it can't be much worse than the ride in so it should be a good time.