[ Grand-Bassam, Côte d’Ivoire ]
I arrived in Man almost two weeks ago to meet a friend and ride together for a few days. That friend is Amy Haass—my former skydiving teammate, an Alaska-dweller and general accepter of All Challenges Great and Small. Also: super cool human being.
As such, I left our itinerary in her hands: ride on the main (mostly paved) road back towards Abidjan?, or commit fully—taking the route I would have taken were I riding alone. Unsurprisingly (and to my delight), she chose the Go For It option.
Although we only had three full days on the bikes, they were perfect days on quintessential African backroads. Mud? Check. Puddle slalom? Check. Rocks and tiny villages and river crossings and huge crowds of curious kids and a night’s lodging with a village chief and a dicey, near-dark sprint through a rainy, muddy, uninhabited and spooky forest? Check, check, check, etc, etc.
It was fantastic to have some company on the road, even for such a short time, and for a change of pace, I am actually in a photo or two—proving once and for all that I’m not faking this trip from the same soundstage where they filmed the “moon landings.” (Wink wink.)
I hope you’re all well, and best regards from Abidjan.
—jim
PS
A handful of these photos (those featuring me) are by my friend Amy Haass. They should be labeled in the captions.
PPS
Our departure from Man was delayed by a day and a half because a certain doctor at a certain local hospital told a certain someone aka me that I had a certain parasite that was responsible for certain (very mild) symptoms I had hoped were pure hypochondria. three guesses what that certain parasite was. OK. Not three guesses. One guess. Got it? Yeah. Me too.
