I am just back from eight weeks spent in London and Kenya. Sadly I could not take my recumbent along with me, although I am thinking of buying one and leaving it in London for my use.
While in London I used one of the bikes that my host family had. It was the first wedgie I have ridden in ten years! Those seats still hurt. But I enjoyed riding in Wandsowrth Common and around the neighborhood, constantly reminding myself that everything is backwards in London....you ride on the left.
Eric and I tok bikes on the train out to Cheswick where his daughter was participating in a crew race. So we road along the rive path as she raced screaming encouragement and drawing not a few looks from the people just out for a Saturday stroll.
The recent bombings in London have sent a spurt in bicycle sales and in fact London is painting in bicycle lanes all over the place. The city's roads are so narrow however, that most everyone drives paying attention to the oncoming traffic and the bikes since you are constantly forced to pull over to let someone else come by in the other direction.
I spent a great afternoon in Trafalgar Square at a bike show. Tons of people and exhibits and free maps of all the best bicycling routes in London.
The off to Kenya. Most people in Kenya travel by foot or by mini busses called Matatus. But there are also tons of folks on Indian and Chinese made bikes. I thought we were loaded down on out trip until I saw these folks carrying everything from coffins to cases of coake bottles stacked six high on the back of their bikes.
Most of the bikes have just one gear, I road a fairly broken down bike from the Theological School over to Maseno University. It was tough work bumping along the rutted dirt roads on what is essentially a street bike. Buying bikes is easy, getting parts and repairs more difficult.
The toughest riders in Kenya though might well be the Boda-Boda bikers. These are folks with a padded rack on the back who offer rides to be for 10+ shillings (about 13 cents US). Originally these folks ferried people across the no-person's land between the Ugandan and Kenyan borders. So Border to Border riders became Boda-Boda and spread as informal taxis. If it is hard to ride the roads with one gear all by yourself, imagine what it is like to do it with a person on the back.
I think it would be great fun to do a Mombassa to Uganda ride, although you would have to plan your places to stay pretty carefully.
