I had set my alarm for 6 but I must've slept through it and I woke up at 7. My body felt surprisingly good but my decision was still the same and in the interest of health I thought hitch hiking was best. I pushed Nigel back to the road and with no cars around I hopped and decided to cycle a bit.
As I've said before, the first hour was good, I made good ground and typically cycled past a cafe stop just 2 km down the road. I was happy with the hut though. I would've just kept all the truckers up all night and destroyed their toilet facilities if I stayed at the cafe.
A couple of hours went by and I had covered quite a lot of ground. I hadn't sweat that much so wasn't adding to my dehydration but certainly wasn't aiding it as I was still mentally focused on going nil by mouth and adding no fuel to my stomachs already devastating fire.
At the first hint of it getting a bit warm I decided to stop. This came at half 10 and I looked down at my odometer and I had covered nearly 50miles. My head, still the strongest part of my body got to thinking. Sleep the hottest part of the day and wake up again at 4, do a couple of hours and maybe, just maybe, I could get to Khartoum with another day of taking baby steps.
I found the perfect shelter to sleep through the midday sun and woke to my alarm at 4. Getting back on the bike with tired drained legs is hard, its even harder when you haven't eaten anything in one and half days and only drank half a litre of water. It's hard, but not impossible.
2 hours on the bike was ambitious, I hit 45 minutes and started to wobble but managed longer by playing footballer name games in my head. I had to go through the alphabet A to Z naming a player that began with that letter. I started with foreigners then just English then did it again with just first names. It worked. I managed an extra hour and I decide to stop at the 120km marker.
Amazingly, through strength that I don't know where from other than the heavens, through maintaining a logical mind and the odd football name game, I had managed to get myself a day (a hard day) but a day nevertheless, away from Khartoum.
"How am I going to get you there tomorrow then wise guy?" My legs said to my head. At this point I had no food for two days, 1 litre of water as I only took enough each time to wet my lips and my muscles were about as mobile as an oil rig. The plan was to wake up at 5 and do it all in one long drawn out hit but all before the sun had a chance to affect the body, either through sweating or taking a layer of my arms.
I found a spot by a bush no more than a few metres from the road. Not ideal at all but i didn't want to have to push Nigel through too much deep sand. I had to put the tent up which took up more effort then I wanted but still thinking straight, I knew the bugs from the bush could potentially be a lot of trouble throughout the night.
I collapsed in the tent. I didn't have the energy to zip the tent all the way as I just lay there exhausted but proud of my efforts and pleased that the opportunity of success was strong and i was not on the back of a truck regretting a rushed decision or worse, ruing a poor decision and being left in the desert.
The last place you want to be is dehydrated and exhausted in the desert and I was exactly there. Could things get any worse? Well experiencing something crawl over my bare leg was pretty horrible. I looked down to see a spider about the same size as a 2 year old's hand walking over my leg. Luckily I'm not afraid of spiders like some of my mates and in my situation I couldn't care if it was the size of a lawnmower. I knew it was small by African standards anyway so I grabbed it and launched it out the tent. Then I made the extra effort to zip all the tent up and collapsed again into a heap
Today was a day for proving how the mind is so much stronger than the body and tomorrow would have to be a day of grit and determination and maybe some help from a greater power.
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