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�Lovely Rita�� </br> The Beatles

An Ode to a Bicycle

Roundtheworldbybike
2005-11-18 11:07:03

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Rita and I first met 5 years ago. Things have never been the same since. It has certainly not been true love all the way but we have seen many amazing things together and struggled through and over many obstacles. She has been a loyal bicycle! Rita is a 1997 model Specialized Rockhopper (www.specialized.com) and has reliably carried me 20,000 miles across more than 30 nations and 4 continents.

Unfortunately after all that the hellish rock fields of Northern Sudan finally took their toll- hardly surprising with 50kg of equipment loaded onto the bike. But the team at Specialized UK have been faultless at sorting me out quickly and efficiently with a new bicycle so that I am still pedalling south on a Specialized Rockhopper.

I would not choose to cycle around the World on any other bicycle. The Rockhopper is a classic, equally at home on dirt trails, commuting to the office or on the mountain passes of Ethiopia. It really is a bike for all purposes and I am very happy to be continuing my journey through Africa on a Specialized Rockhopper.

The only dilemma is that now Rita is no longer in my life my new bike needs a name� Any ideas?!

In an attempt to appear intelligent I have decided to add some poetry to my website occasionally. Here are the first offerings�

In Gondar, Ethiopia is the Debra Berhan Selassie church, famous for its roof-paintings of Ethiopian-looking cherubs. I visited the church with James Love, in Ethiopia for a Gap Year (www.gondarlink.org.uk). He has written this poem about the church:

In the silent beauty of the wilderness church,

Amidst the trees and birds and rocks,

Moved by an unknown breeze,

I prayed, I did.

I asked God for a sign.

But nothing came.

And it seemed the beauty was cast out of that place,

Or was it I?

Perhaps God was there all along,

Resting in the patient, secret beauty

Of those eternal walls.

And to celebrate having ticked off the length of the Blue Nile, here�s James Leigh Hunt�.

THE NILE

It flows through old hushed Egypt and its sands,

Like some grave mighty thought threading a dream,

And times and things, as in that vision, seem

Keeping along it their eternal sands,-

Caves, pillars, pyramids, the shepherd bands

That roamed through the young world, the glory extreme

Of high Sesostris, and that southern beam,

The laughing queen that caught the world�s great hands.

Then comes a mightier silence, stern and strong,

As of a world left empty of its throng,

And the void weighs on us; and then we wake,

And hear the fruitful stream lapsing along

Twixt villages, and think how we shall take

Our own calm journey on for human sake.

Funny, he doesn�t mention the hordes of irritating people trying to sell you rides on their feluccas�