Day One /Two

Departure – Day 1

On the day that I left for Heathrow (the 18th February to be precise), I found that what had once been a soft flutter of butterflies in my stomach had now become giant mutant moths. I swigged from a bottle of Kalms all that morning like a drunk from a White Lightning bottle. Despite the fact that I had met most of the girls on the training weekend in the Cotswolds (which, just for future reference, was nowhere near as tough as Kenya – in comparison it was a bit like having a walk up Kinver Edge in training for Mount Everest) and spoke to them regularly on Facebook, I was nervous at the prospect of going out on my own with essentially one hundred people I didn’t really know, I was scared about flying, dreading the travelling, which was set to take nearly two days and just generally bricking it!

My poor old mom and dad had the job of getting me down to the airport (or up….whatever…I did History not Geography!) in one, relatively together piece.

Luckily when I got there, as I should have known, it was all just fine. I met up with the other girls and we all instantly put each other at ease, sharing our terror and doing the only thing that seemed right …..heading for the bar!

Drinks in hand, we toasted the trip and then gave Heathrow a bit of a treat! Gillian, one of our ladies organised a flash mob song, changing the words to “Leaving on a Jet Plane,” to tell the story behind our trip, which we performed for a very confuzzled airport just before boarding the plane.

Here it is:

All our bags are packed, we’re ready to go,

We’re standing here at Heathrow,

We hate to leave you here and say goodbye,

But after all the training and early morn’s,

The plane is waiting to take us on,

Already we’re so pumped we could fly,

Send wishes and smiles with us

Tell us that you’ll think of us,

Think of us as we go on our way

Cause we’re leaving on a jet plane

In two weeks we’ll all be back again

Oh, we can’t wait to go.

There’s so many miles we’ve rode around,

So many roads been up and down,

I tell you now, they don’t mean a thing,

Every mile we ride, we ride for you,

Every hill we climb, we climb for you,

When we come back, we’ll have done a brilliant thing

Chorus

Now the time has come to leave here,

To do our bit for cancer research

Any minute now we’ll be on our way,

As we think about the reasons why

We’ve all made this sacrifice,

We know it will all be worth it in the end.

Chorus.

I’ve never been part of a flash mob before – that’s one ticked off on the list.

The flight was long, boring and uncomfortable, just as flights should be, but finally we arrived in Kenya. Henk our guide, guru, motivator and organiser was at the airport to greet us and guide us onto some very rickety old buses, which were to become part of our little family during the week and we set out on the four hour transfer to the Green Hills Hotel in Nyeri.

I was told that there were elephants at the airport when you arrived in Kenya before I went and naively believed it, which everyone laughed at- but ha ha, I was pleased to see that there actually is elephants at Nairobi airport, albeit metal ones. They look quite real though! Jokes on you!

We literally dropped our bags in our rooms, briefly meeting our new room mates – mine was Gina ( Jirina Klimesova) from the Czech Republic- before we had to head out for bike fitting before it got dark. We then had a very quick ride up to Baden Powells Grave to test our new toys. This might have been alright in ordinary circumstances, but for those of you that don’t know, Baden Powell founded the Boy Scout and Girl Guide movement and on that particular day, the locals were holding a jamboree to celebrate the 100th anniversary, meaning that the streets were absolutely packed.

Do bare in mind that all the areas we visited were not tourist areas and so there were no white people around at all, until suddenly one hundred white women in lycra on bikes appeared in the middle of proceedings. We caused quite a stir! The locals kept pushing to get to us and touching the bikes.  Shouting things to us and waving. None of it was at all malicious, but it was incredibly intimidating, especially as we were all so tired after a long journey.

Looking back on it now, I suppose it was just an introduction to what was to come. That particular afternoon though, we were glad to get out of there and go back to the hotel for a drink and a shower.

The rest of the day was pretty much spent getting to know each other, talking about why we were there and what we were expecting. Over dinner that night (a buffet of rice, veg, potatoes, fruit, chapattis, meats and sweet cakes – which we had every meal time while we were there) Ann Frampton, a remarkable lady and our ‘leader,’ welcomed us to the challenge and she and Henk went on to tell us what to expect.

Bed that night was very much welcomed, but Gina and I found it hard to sleep, chatting away in the early hours when we both woke up at the same time, nerves and excitement refusing to go away and let us rest!

The 5am wake up call came sooner than we wanted – the show was officially on the long and bumpy road!