Mostly about bikes

Only 1 week of work left for me here now. But still more than 2 weeks until I can hop on my bike...

So far this week I've been learning how to hang a wood vaulted ceiling from the metal structure of Keith's house. Today I taught Dady how to install doors.

On Sunday afternoon, Nathan, Melody, April and I went up the road a few km on bikes. It's farther than we'd been before, and the road gets into really nice forest, with rather huge trees along the way. I was on a toleka, a local bike, and it sure made me glad for how nice my bike is back at home. By the time we made it to where the Mosiers were enjoying a creek along the road, the toleka had fallen apart enough that I decided to leave it with them. So Nathan and I took turns running and biking the rest of the way.

One note - the locals commonly their toleka bikes on journeys of 100-200km. The poor guys sure have to baby their bikes. And they carry huge loads on their bikes. Often they will have two 75+lb, 3.5+ft high sacks of charcoal on the back of a bike. And then they have to get their bikes with the tippy loads off the road quickly so trucks can get by. And their brakes are almost useless.

Farther down the road there was the reddest butterfly I think I've ever seen. It was right where a guy was trying to fix his toleka, so I stayed with him until the others caught up and could take a picture. The guy said he couldn't fix his bike with what he had, so he probably had to push it to the next village to get it fixed.

We went on until a village, then had to turn back because of time. We went back to the creek where the Mosiers were with Keith's kayak, and had a good soak. It was fun to try out the kayak: it's a river kayak, so it is much more responsive than an ocean kayak. I had to learn how to paddle without making the kayak turn a half-circle every stroke.

Pastor Mtenzi's evangelistic meetings are still going well.
And Nathan fell a big tree yesterday: it was neat to learn a bit about how that's done.
And that's all for now.