Luxor - Egypt - January something, I think its a Friday

trough the first week and through most of Egypt already, have been averaging around 130kms a day, but have had huge tailwinds making it very fast, you can sit in a bunch at 45-50kmh some days, makes you feel like a bit of a hero.

The routine is starting to form and resembles wake at 5.20am, pack tent, drink tea, eat porridge, shit, climb on bike, ride 70kms till lunch, eat, pee, shit if you need to, ride 70kms till camp, set up, fix bikes, eat, pee go to bed...repeat. The simplicity of it is actually very relaxing, along with hard days of riding, I'm sleeping better than I have in years.

I sat eating dinner a couple of nights ago, and it wasn't till I'd almost finished that I considered what it was that was in front of me, (think it was beef, but choose not to ask) you sit on a camp stool and it is often dark by the time everything else is done so you don't always get to see what is in front of you. Food has been edible everyday, I don't envy the chef his job, there are only so many ways you ca present porridge before people are going to start getting pissed off, but everyone is fine so far.

The racing side has been fairly relaxed to begin with, but one of the older guys snuck out of lunch to try and use the tailwind to get a stage win, most people picked up on the fact and coupled with the fact he is one of the few dickheads anyway I think hell be getting a hard time from a few the next week or so.

We head into Sudan in a few days, and the road starts to go to crap so it should begin to get more interesting, the way they start the tour is clever to give people a fairly easy week to start getting the legs going, the most climbing in a day so far has only been about 800 metres, as soon as that changes so will the bunch sizes.

Egypt has been a friendly country, I expected it to be much harder work, the kids at the side of the road come out and wave. Almost every truck or car that passes beeps to say hello, thumbs up are given allot and toothless grins appear from most of the old men as you ride past. Camels, donkey's and horse's are used way more than I would have thought and much of the farming I passed yesterday was done by hand still (all the days leading up to yesterday where in the desert)

Work wise, my duties are pretty good, I get 2 breakfasts a week, where you get up at 5, help with breakfast then ride sweep for the morning, I'm then free to ride that afternoon as I wish on those days. One day web and waste, this entails riding the whole day how you want and writing about it to be uploaded by satellite for the tour d'afrique website but as it would be your best day you get the added bonus of waste. As the name would imply it involves dealing with 60 peoples waste - digging a shit pit and filling it in after, burning anything that can be burnt, burying the organic waste and giving anything reusable to the closest village. - Kinda strange day of highs and lows really.
I also get a day free to ride as I wish, and I have 2 days of timekeeping, where I have to time the race, I should get to ride these days in some shape or form, but not always the entire stage.
All in so far this week I rode all of the stages except one where I helped out another staff member who was sick, pretty happy with it really. In the evenings I have to fix what needs fixing, which has been a couple of hours most days so far, then I'm free to do whatever.

All that for ten dollars a day!

No phots right now as im in a dodgy cafe in Luxor, will try and get some up soon.