On a Bike and a Prayer
day 17. bad wheels and broken gears
I woke with the sun and set to work to clean and salvage as many bearings as possible. None of the bike shops in town had a spare cone to fit, so I greased and replaced it. We breakfasted on bread that tasted of crumpets and big milky coffees. My bike was working by 10.30 and we left town at 11.00am aiming for Sidi Rahhal by nightfall.
The road from Demnate climbed gently to a vast Prairie Land plateau of wheat fields and olive groves. The road snaked and shimmered in the heat hazed distance and children working in the fields flocked and fastened themselves ahead of us - parting with waves of glee and cheery `Bonjour's as we sped by.
We lunched ploughman's style on cheese and bread and figs and biscuits in an olive field and attempted to repair my integrated gears which were no longer integrated. Stephane talked to a fieldworker who sat smoking hashish and telling him anything he wanted to hear. We were enquiring about a mountain railway that climbed into the High Atlas and was marked on our older maps. The fieldworker assured us it was still running, but only on Fridays, (the day we had mentioned we'd be there).
We left our shady glade in the middle of the afternoon and
made good progress along dime-straight roads across vast Prairie-style fields.
Sidi Ahal was another nowhere place with buses stopping and people coming and
going and zombified locals wondering round in dazed shell shocked states. We
quickly established there was nowhere to stay in town and installed ourselves in
a cafe to while away an hour eating and shopping for tomorrows provisions.
Full of food and already fed up of the hostile people in the town we cycled on into the evening sun to find a short cut dirt track back south to the Tizi `n' Test road. It turned out to be illusive and we opted to bed down under a rambling olive tree behind some singing water rushes 200 yards off the road.
It was too dark to write by 7.15pm and we all nodded off in our sleeping bags as the wind wiped the rushes into oscillating nods.
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