Chapter 8
Sun's back.
It’s still early but that’s definitely light.
Day... eight.
I think it might even be colder now than during the night.
The bathroom’s flooded. The taps have been leaking straight out of the wall, and it looks like the drain won't drain.
I hate this place.
Easily the worst value place on the planet.
Anyway, today’s a big one.
Almost four hundred clicks.
Gotta get going.
The Shike’s not happy with the cold. Nor should it be.
But it starts.
I peel out of town.
Adios, to this utterly charmless pile of shit.
Heading out of town a fighter jet goes screaming low overhead as it takes off from some unseen airport. I don’t get how, with people living in these conditions, that having fighter jets can be a priority for the government. But it’s still a fighter jet, low down, at full beans, so that’s fucking awesome.
I almost bin the Shrike while trying to keep my eye on the grey beast as it sharply banks and screams away over the mountains.
Out of the town the road straightens out. And goes super bland.
You couldn’t design a blander road.
The tarmac’s featureless (in a good way), there are two lanes, straight as an arrow, flat as a tack, with a line of nothing-trees as far away from the road as I can chuck a shotput. They artfully obscure any view that might have been there.
It’s the blandest road I’ve been on. Ever. Nullarbor-esque. Just absolutely nothing. Nothing to engage the brain. Not a single distraction.
A very, very lonely road.
Hardly any villages to speak of, which doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.
There’s no traffic, except for the very occasional road-train; massive, long trucks flying along at a terrifying clip. They're passing me like I’m standing still. Blink and you’ll miss it.
The only thing of note is that donkeys are back; I haven’t seen one of those on this side of the Sahara desert. A surprisingly noble creature, the donkey; nothing ever fazes them and they just get the job done. Their return is a sign that we’re leaving the tropics behind.
Four hours of nothing and barely anything to report later and I make the conscious, smart and mature decision to break early and get some lunch.
Very out of character.
I manage to find a place with a big plate of rice and mystery meats, most of which isn’t even close to chewable, so it gets the seagull treatment again.
I’m proud of myself for having the discipline, for a change, to take a break and take care of myself instead of blindly racing on to nowhere.
Shooing the kids away from the bike and we’re off again.
The road is, somehow, even blander.
No diversions.
It’s just me and the thump of the bike and nothing else.
It’s like a world of sensory-deprivation by way of sensory-sameness.
I’m glued to the speedo and the click counter.
Even that’s not changing.
I tell myself I can break in an hour; when I’ve done another eighty clicks.
The speedo ticks over, slower and slower. Grinding out.
A watched kettle never boils.
The break never comes...
And then it does.
I shake it off.
That felt like forever.
I really don’t want to get in the saddle for another eighty.
But I gotta do it.
I can feel my head crapping out. Everything’s gone to fog and mush. I can’t think clearly.
I start to sing.
Les Miserables, the musical. Of of all things.
From the top. "Look down...! Look down....!"
...
"Now bring me prisoner two four six oh one...! Your time is up and your parole's begun. You know what that means..."
"Yes, it means I’m freeee."
"No!"
Etcetera.
I know it all. Every word. I can hear every note from the orchestra in my head.
I get a little stuck in Valjean's Soliloquy, must be said...
My helmet is the opera. The Shrike’s keeping time.
Out here, there’s no critic other than myself, and I really go for it.
It helps.
The clock starts to tick again.
Finally something to focus on. Something else to think about. A distraction.
Just between you and me; I reckon I do a better Javert than Russel Crowe ever did...
Not that that’s saying much... In fact, that’s not really saying anything at all.
I go clean through to ABC Café. That’s a lot of singing. More than an hours worth.
I'm not a big fan of Marius, so I let it drop there.
Back to just The Shrike, this road, and Angola.
I feel the slip again.
Then I feel a tug at the left footpeg. Like the footpeg is the rod and I’ve got a fish giving me some bites. A random sort of feeling, like someone’s giving the underside of the pegs a little tap with a hammer every now and again.
It’s disconcerting.
"What is that?"
It’s happened before back in Ghana, it weirded me out then, and then it went away, I guess.
It’s weirding me out again now.
Something in the gearbox? From stomping on the gear before? Oil?
What is it?
My head won’t let it go. Like a dog with a bone.
I try to start up Les Miserables from the top again but I can't stay focused. I’m too busy concentrating on the feeling through my foot like a blind man’s fingers on a strip of braille.
My ears pick up a tinging. A definite tinging...
Clanging now.
"Fuck."
I’ve been spending half my time looking at the road, the other half looking for the problem.
I’m measuring the clank and tink and tug against every variable that I can imagine. Searching, mentally reaching for the cause. Mechanical causes, which lead to mechanical outcomes. And it's nothing but nightmares.
I have to break. I can’t handle thinking and feeling and listening for it anymore. My head and senses are in overdrive, going into meltdown.
I pull over to walk it off.
It’s my only weapon for shaking it off. The only handle I have left to pull.
The goal for the day, Ondjiva, is still a couple of hundred clicks away...
I get back on the bike and go. The Shrike starts clanking right away.
I feel my throat constrict.
Oh shit.
The pinch at the back of the jaw. Then the tightness in the chest. The rising heat.
I can’t breathe.
I pull over again. Turn off the bike.
I’m dying. I’m dying or breaking or both.
Everything is overwhelmed, like a thick wave has me pinned under. I’ve gone in too deep, I’ve burned through myself, all my energy, all my resources. And now it’s killing me. I’m drowning.
I can’t fucking breathe.
Each out breath gets stuck on the uptake, and for a long moment my lungs are wrung empty, and I can't breathe in again. Till my throat clears and I can suck oxygen again.
I feel like I'm breathing through a straw.
I take a walk. A very long walk.
My body slowly backs away from the cliff of tightness.
I can breathe a little.
But I can’t get on that bike again.
I can't.
It’s terrifying me.
I can't do that again.
I don’t know if I can do these miles. I don’t think - even if nothing goes wrong - that I can go that far.
And if something, something catastrophic happens? No.
But I can't stop here.
There are no villages.
There’s nothing; the last three hours have felt like I’ve been on a landscape treadmill. Same same same nothing.
Can I wait here and put the Shrike on a one of these trucks? How would I stop a truck? How would I convince them to take us? How would I lift the Shrike over my head onto a truck? What if the trucks are full?
There’s nothing for it.
I can’t do this anymore. I can’t take it. It’s too much.
But what’s my other choice?
I wish I had a motorbike. A big motorbike. A highway monster where we could smash the rest of this distance in no time. But I’m stuck with my Shrike. My clanking Shrike. It feels like I'm crawling. I just want it to be over.
If there was any way out that I could take, I’d take it. I wouldn’t even think twice; fuck the trip. The candle's been burning at both ends and now the game's over.
But there is no choice. No other option.
I can still feel the fizz in the head and the shortness of my breath being squeezed out by the tight, balled up chest. But it's not getting any better.
Get on with it.
I throw my leg over the bike, and like last night's cold shower I feel like recoiling away out of reflex.
As I ride, it slowly ebbs away. And a softness comes in to replace it. Everything goes soft and mushy. A beautiful feeling of non-terror. The body relaxes like I’ve taken a hit of deadening opiates.
Into oblivion.
I find my clanging culprit; it’s the Shrike's chain slapping around on things it shouldn’t be slapping around against.
And that’s not a bad thing; my head had far worse theories bouncing around in there.
That chain was tight as a snare drum only a couple of days ago...
Every time I go over crawling speed it starts clanging and slapping. So even though all I want to do is go faster and faster I slow thing's right down.
It’s like not moving at all.
And there’s still such a long way to go...
It all goes to hell again. I’m dying again.
Mind, body and soul all go haywire. I can’t control anything.
I stop quickly, again. And walk it off, again.
I tinker with the chain. It's flappy.
Can’t be long now till that's done...
I don’t fix it; readjusting the back wheel to take up the slack would take a long time. I go again.
I just want this day to be over.
I have to stop again.
And again.
And again...
Over and over. Every time my head and body lose it, I have to stop.
I lose count of the number of times I have to stop to hold back whatever it is that’s killing me.
I just want to lie down. I want to lie flat. I can’t ride anymore.
Each time I stop it gets harder. Each time it’s worse.
It feels like I’m making no progress between stops.
It’s getting more and more desperate.
I am getting more and more desperate.
I can feel the tension ratcheting. I don't know what happens if it snaps...
The clinking and clanking gets worse and worse, and louder and louder. Even at low speed it’s still not happy.
Something's gotta give.
I crawl into Ondjiva in twilight.
Eight hours.
And that’s Angola. It's done.
With only fifty clicks to go to the border with Namibia, it’s almost in the books.
I’m calling it.
I do a flyby of the village and see nothing.
I pop the question to some locals and they point me in the right direction.
I find a place to stay. It’s outrageously expensive. But the Kwanza has become like monopoly money for me; it’s lost all of its meaning, so I'm making it rain.
Plus, breakfast is included.
The day washes off me in the shower. The tension, the worry, the fear.
I start to feel like myself again.
A little bit.
The last two days of grime and road grit goes with it down the drain.