Monday, 10 January, 2011 --- Day 10

Stats
Start at TUNIS End at BIZERTE
Day dist: 71.33 kms
Riding time: 3:47
Avg speed: 18.7
Max speed: 47.8
Beg day odo: 671.40 kms
End day odo: 744.6 kms

Up at around 9:00. Had breakfast and immediately rushed to Rue xxx Slim at the Madina where I was told yesterday that there were bike stores. I had to secure a carton box for Spithas’ airplane trip. I did not see any stores and I started asking around. The story was different today. There was one store which from wherever I asked it was a little further down the street. I guess the elusive store kept moving away from me as I was walking towards it. Finally, I entered a hardware store and implored the owner to tell me about that store. He attended my case w/ interest and told me that to find a bike store I would have to go to “Rue de Madrid,” which was quite a walk from there. I got the directions and started walking fast. Finally, after asking again and again, I ended up at Madrid Street. I asked again about bike stores, people kept saying that there were many but the only one I saw was selling motorbikes and a only a couple of bicycles. I went in and asked using my best French, if they had a box for Spithas, they could not even understand what I was talking about. After looking around I found another similar store whose helpful owner told me that he had no boxes of the kind I needed and that nobody else around had any. My best bet was to take a cab and go to Carrefour, a large department store, where they would certainly have carton boxes, if not of bikes, definitely of refrigerators, etc., which I could dice and splice into one box.

I left the store disappointed and not knowing what to do. As I was walking a smiling man came up to me, greeted me politely, and asked me if everything was OK. I explained to him the situation and his answer was that this was not a problem. He said “let’s go have a coffee and I’ll tell you what to do.” As we walked toward a coffee shop he said he was very happy because he had just become a father for the first time to a baby girl. That was strange given his age, he looked in his late 50s, but what the heck, he knew how to find a box for me. He ordered the coffees and we sat at table. As we chatted I asked him about the violence that had broken out in a Tunisian town that I had seen on TV yesterday. He told me not to talk about things like this because the police had people planted in coffee shops listening to what people were saying and it would spell trouble. We chatted for a little while where I understood that the man that would solve my problem had no idea that I was biking around the country and that I needed a carton box. He seemed in a rush and said he would have to go to the hospital. He then said that we would have to pay for the coffees and looked at me expecting me to pay for the coffees that he invited me to. I did just that and as we got up he told me that he intended to buy flowers for his wife and asked me to help him w/ a small donation. I told him that I certainly would love to contribute to his happiness but first I needed to find a carton box, if he could help me w/ that he would get a tip. We walked down the street and the amount he had originally asked me for the flowers kept becoming lower. Finally I told him that I did not have any money to spare but I was really happy for him, I indeed shared his happiness, asked him to kiss his wife and daughter for me, and just walked the other way.

I went around asking about carton boxes from store to store. Finally, someone pointed me to a store further down the street that was selling motorbikes and few bicycles. I went there and stated my case to the two owners. They understood what I was looking for but did not have any carton boxes. They did not give up though. One of them went to the back of the store and when he returned he was holding two identical carton boxes that could be easily sliced and spliced into one box to fit Spithas. I thanked as much as I could. They had saved the day for me.

I walked back to the hotel. It was past 12:30 when I arrived. I spent the next hour and a half slicing and splicing, and built a box for Spithas. After that I rushed out, took money out of an ATM, went to a supermarket to victualize, returned to the hotel, loaded Spithas and left. It was 14:00. The goal was Bizerta. I biked past the airport and on


The urban area extended for about 10 kms. Finally I left the inhabited area behind


At 15 kms the road split into the highway and the old national road. Goes w/o saying that I took the old road.




The never ending road


The ride was easy and I doing good time. The landscape was very different from I had seen up until now. It was tamer and more rustic


Entering the Bizerte region


Too good to be true. Things cannot be smooth for too long. It is not natural. We must suffer, otherwise what is the point. This rule of life has no exceptions. My ride was too smooth for too long. Something had to give. Sure enough the wind started blowing in my face rather forcefully. That slowed down everything and made it definite that I would spend the nigh in Bizerta and not continue further. Actually in the picture below in the background you can see the wind farm. There were several other wind farms and people build wind farms only where there is strong wind. This was the case here. No choice. I had to carry on and carry on I did.


The never ending road


Finally I started descending and arrived at sea level.


At 17:30 I stopped for lunch



There were 12 kms left. It took me another 45 mins and I entered the city.

Something did not look right. There were too may people out on the street and very few cars. When I asked a young man where the center was he gave me the directions and added “be careful there is trouble.” “What trouble?” I asked. “It is the police against the Tunisians” his answer was. Evidently this is what I had seen on TV last night. Well what do you say about that? I found the center and asked for a hotel. I followed the directions and found the hotel next to the mosque.

How absent minded can one be? When I looked for my passport, my passport was not there. I immediately remembered what had happened. I had forgotten to reclaim my passport at hotel Salammbo. When I went to Salammbo and showed my passport the reception employee kept it to copy the info later. When I asked for it later he had not finished and told me to ask even later. That second later I totally forgot. Without a passport I could not stay at this hotel. The receptionist said these were the rules his boss had laid down for him and there was nothing he could do. He said, however, if I went to hotel “L’ Orient,” which was a rather expensive hotel, they would probably take me for the night even without my passport. I started biking in that direction. As I was drawing nearer I could see lots of antiriot police and fires lit in the distance, and big stones littering the streets. In my experience fires serve to attenuate the effect of tear gas, and stones is what rioters use to attack the police. It looked riot coming to its end. Few rioters were still around and the police was making sudden dashes against them. I biked through the police and asked them for directions. I was surprised that they even answered me. The fear that they would ask for identification, that is, my passport was lurking in my mind and I made the encounters as brief as possible. Nobody bothered, they were preoccupied w/ other things. When I arrived at hotel “L’ Orient,” I found it hermetically closed. I had to look for another hotel. By asking I ended up at “Hotel de la Plage.” The employee that opened the door did not care for passports. I booted my netbook and showed him the scanned copy of my passport but he did not even take a look. In addition he let me use the phone and call hotel Salammbo to verify that my passport was there.

For the rest I went out to buy Tunisian souvlaki and water and then retired to my room.

CARTAGO DELENDA EST