Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Matt Bleeds in Ghana

So, earlier I alluded to our mountain biking expedition. We rented bikes from a shop outside Aburi Botanical Gardens. Unfortunately the rates were kind of high, and so we decided not to rent a tour guide. The shop assured us that we could follow one of their trails with a "map" which ended up buying a series of 4x6 photos of parts of the trail with directions on the back (e.g. turn left at the tro-tro station). I would have preferred an actual map of the area. Additionally, Kags hasn't done much mountain biking and neither have I, so we started off riding down the main road and pretty much kept to it. After a half hour of gliding downhill we realized it would be a pain to bike back up, so we started our return to the shop. At one point, I saw a side trail that looked very navigable. It wasn't too steep and had a nice wide dirt path, but it very quickly gave way to lots of rubble and became hard to stop. So I fell off my bike, luckily right onto my cushy back pack. The sad thing is that this was probably twenty feet off the main road. I was wearing a helmet and pants (but no pads) and so I was left with some torn pants and a bunch of scrapes on my hands/knee/arm. I used my mad medical skills to clean it with some water from my bottle and then used a little hand sanitizer. After that I alternated between walking the bike and biking up the road back to the shop. At one point, Kags and I got separated and met up back at the shop. Oddly enough he asked everyone he passed if they had seen a white guy with a bike but they all said "No". Maybe I've tanned so much I've started to blend in.

One of the nurses heard that I hurt myself biking and she said, "Now that you've bled on Ghana soil you have to come back."

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