12/30/2023 Bikepacking Guinea Day 144 : Bike Shop Blues

Yesterday, Abdoul invited me on their “shop ride.” I’m sure he told me all about what we were going to do, but I understood little with his Guinean accent overlaid on his street French. At one point, I thought he said we were going to do 160km. They all had road bikes, but I didn’t know of any pavement, so I figured I could keep up on my loaded touring bike.

Our group was 6 people, including the “team captain,” Mohammed Ali. One of the riders was late to arrive, so Abdoul pulled out his phone to show me a short video he had saved on his phone. It was the finish of stage 10 at the 2022 Giro d’Italia being announced in English. We watched the 20 second clip together as Eritrean cyclist Biniam Girmay sprinted ahead and took the win. He was the first black man to win a grand tour stage.

Abdoul cheered as Biniam crossed the line. I felt shivers down my spine; I couldn’t help but absorb his emotion and admiration for this cyclist from the other side of this continent.

I remember watching that stage with Janet, and pantomimed what happened next: When Biniam was on the podium opening the champagne bottle, the cork hit him in the eye, taking him out of the race. We laughed at my awkward charade, but we both knew that Biniam wasn’t able to continue the Giro after this freak accident. When that happened, I thought, “Can’t Africa get a break?”

And that is a lot like how our ride started: Mamoudou’s crank fell off after a couple hundred meters. He pedaled with one leg down the rocky road, disappeared into some vendor stalls, and a minute later someone had fixed it for him. Even if the tools and parts here look like they were scavenged from a dumpster at home, people can quickly cobble things back together.

One rider asked me if my bike was carbon. I said yes, and he said in English, “Carbon is not security,” he pointed at my head tube, “I have carbon vélo. It crack, I hurt my head!”

I noticed that the top tube of Abdoul’s aluminum frame was cracked all the way around. Well, if you’re going to be mountain biking on a road bike, you might as well bring a junker. The sidewalls of his tires were completely shredded; I expected that in 160km, there would be some flats.

It became apparent that I had misunderstood the distance when we started riding rocky sigletrack. I easily slipped to the front during the descent with my full suspension. The guys kept arriving, laughing.. talking about how so-and-so just crashed. Haha. One of the guys pulled a roll of tape out of his pocket and began taping the handlebar back on to the stem as the other guys laughed at his misfortune. He was laughing too. I might have been the only one NOT laughing… these bikes looked dangerous.

But never mind that; we were approaching a climb. Abdoul has the competitive gene, and I took his bait as he looked over his shoulder, sprinting up the climb. This was a race, and he wasn’t going to get any mercy from me. I gave it full gas. How was his cracked frame sustaining his 800 watt input? He leapt away quickly, but I slowly started to close in as he tired… but then he launched another attack! He beat me to the top. My legs burning, I couldn’t help but notice that he and the other 3 guys weren’t even out of breath.

With a lactate burner like that, I was happy to learn that we were only doing 16km, not 160. They took me to a cool waterfall.

There, one of the riders who knew a few words of English asked me, “can you help me race in the United States? I have the strong legs, and the mind.” He pointed to his head. He was supposed to do a time trial today, but opted to ride with the group instead (probably because I was there). At that point, I really did wish I could help. Look at what these guys are doing: Their heroes are the pro racers (they knew all the big names). They are riding bikes that were meant for smooth pavement on baby heads, sharp rocks, and single track. Everything is cobbled together, frames are broken, yet they laugh when they crash and take the riding seriously. They’re all fit. This is their passion.

After the ride, we went to the shop. It was opening time, and Abdoul and Mohammed Ali ran the shop. They went into the dark room and pulled everything out front to hang on the door, or rest on the stoop. It was a cornucopia of materials retrieved from the dumpster behind an American bike shop. Even the spare parts were broken; I imagine they were going to “part out” the parts.

Amidst the clutter of salvaged parts and patchy dreams, you can see in these riders a relentless human spirit to push forward. To dream to be a racer, in spite of the odds. Hey, it’s tough odds for all of us at that level. I admire those who dream big and work hard. I like their passion for cycling and how they “make it work”, and of course like that they invited me to ride and showed me a waterfall I never would have found otherwise!
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