On the morning of Monday, December 30, we met to board three vans. As we milled about, I saw a few people with pieces of treasure that would eventually become the back rack for their monkey bike. In a state of panic, I scoured a park across the road, grabbing a few large sticks and two blocks of wood. This had the undesirable effect of meaning I got the last seat in one of the vans — in the way back, which was raised up a bit and had no legroom at all. Cool. We left on time, at 9:15am. Within the first 20 minutes or so, we had to pull over for a fellow backseater with an urgent need to deal with nausea. We were then on our way. We had some coffee stops and a nice lunch. We crossed the Atlas Mountains. Fair amount of snow! The sun set at around 6:30pm and people tracking the ride on their phones said we had a few more hours.
We got to the camp at 10pm. A few camels and three rows of monkey bikes greeted us, along with a fire pit, hot dinner, a variety of beverages, and tents to sleep in. Each tent was roughly 10’ by 10’, with 2 or 3 beds. No insulation. It gets quite cold in the desert at night (probably below freezing). We had heavy blankets. It worked, but it took some getting used to.
Breakfast the next morning (Dec 31) was followed by a brief demonstration of a monkey bike along with basically all of the things that could go wrong. We learned how to fix roughly half of them. Then we met our monkeys.
I had bike #35. It was time to test drive!
Oh, wait. I almost forgot. These bikes are manual shift, not automatic. For the Europeans, no big deal. Heck, for basically everybody, no big deal. For me, big deal. I have two experiences with a manual transmission. First, in my high school driver’s ed course, I wrote a paper on how to use a stick shift. I got a B. Second, when I was with Jesse and James in Iceland in 2010, we had a manual. We went around the ring road. (It was great!) I drove it for two days. The first day was great once I got into gear. No traffic! The second day we were in Akureyri. I stopped at a red light. Then it turned green. I stalled. My mind went blank. It was a mess. So here I am with this ridiculous machine that I need to know how to fix when it breaks down in the middle of nowhere, and I’m not even convinced I’ll figure out how to make it move forward. Cool.
Okay, back to the first test drive. Start the bike. Yep! Clutch, shift into first. Great! Throttle and release clutch smoothly, super! I went 10 feet in first gear, which was awesome, and then into some deep sand and face planted, which was less awesome. Fortunately only like 30 people witnessed this.
Eventually I could make the thing run. I got all the way into fourth gear. Super! Though when it was idling, it sounded pretty low. One of the mechanics poked and prodded at it for a bit, said that the carburetor something something and took it into the makeshift shop to take things apart.
While that was happening others were building back racks.
As you can see in the picture above, the back rack is small. You could put your phone on it. And maybe a key.
I was delayed because my bike was in the shop. Eventually they decided to give me a new one. #49 was mine! Test driving was fine. Then, with some wood, access to a drill, and some cable ties, I got a decent back rack!
We got a more detailed mechanical lesson. How to change the spark plug, clean the air filter, mess with the chain, and lots of other stuff that sounds very technical. I nodded along. Clearly I was going to have to befriend people who know what they’re doing and see if they’d let me ride with them.
Oh, there was a makeshift race course created in the sand dunes near the camp. Something like seven heats of four riders. Through deep sand, awful mud, and a little bit of solid ground. Then a final race consisting of the winners of each heat along with Tom, the company founder. Would you believe I won?! (** See note at end.)
We had sunset beverages in the sand dunes, a final briefing, dinner, and then it was time for bed. Or time to party like it’s 2025. I slept. It was cold. So it goes! The next day was launch day. Nervous!!
** Seriously, I did win something. It just happened to be the award for slowest lap on the course. For this, I got a beer. And here’s what happened. In my heat, I got stuck in the heavy sand by the camels. Couldn’t get my bike to start. The other riders finished. I lost. The next heat started. They all beat me too. Ugh. Talk about demoralizing. Though I did score a cold beer.