My name is Gary Suckall. The forthcoming trip to Africa will be my fourteenth Norwood Challenge.
Here I am pictured in Brazil resting after a tough days cycling between Paul Zimmerman and Martin Ross. Both of these guys are coming to Africa. Each if them is irritating in his own sweet way. More of them later
John is the one without the hat.
We all live in Leeds
We have decided to call our blog
“Be prepared”.
After having done so many challenges we feel that we are in a privileged position to offer advice on what to expect on our African adventure.
We will advise on such weighty matters as--
The type of preparations which should be made.
Training schedules.
What type of people our fellow cyclists are likely to be?
How to avoid the over friendly.
How to win a snowball fight.
How to escape from angry villagers
Where best, and in what quantity, to apply the Vaseline.
Hazards we may expect to find.
How to find a toilet in the bush
And much much more.
I appreciate that many of our readers will have cycled with us before. One or two of them still talk to us. I apologise in advance if you recognise yourself amongst the caricatures about whom we will write. But I guess you only have yourselves to blame.
Talking of caricatures many people believe that people are friendlier in the North. It’s just not true although I will be anyone’s friend if you let me share your Vodka. John prefers Bacardi. Clive likes scotch (naturally)
Let’s start with a potentially very useful phrase in Swahili
“Sheng hua simba nyuma” roughly translates as
“Get that lion off my back”.
Another potentially useful phrase is likely to be
“Nini ni hiu juu change nyuma “
This means “What is that on my back?”
This may well elicit the answer, in Swahili,
“What am I, a bloody furrier?”
Please note that by no means all Kenyans are furriers.
If you are at all interested in exactly what it is that is trying to chew your leg off a visit to your local library wild life section may well be appropriate
I will aim to include at least one such useful phrase each time the blog is updated.
You can also expect contributions from Clive Goldstein . Clive, a tough guy from near “The Gorbals”, likes to be called “Scot Clive” and is pictured singing below. This will be his second trip.
