Update #14
Across the Nubian desert...on an R1!!
The road out of Wadi Halfa was black top with occasional sections of piste. Everyone had told me the road was acceptably firm for the type of bike I was riding, but that remained to be seen. The heat had built all day and showed no sign of abating to comfortable levels and it was past five in the evening. For my part I had a job to do and that meant riding my R1 across the Nubian Desert. It was a Herculean task reminiscent of some kind of Greek myth. At one end of the understandable spectrum it had stupidity written all over it, but, at the other end, it had, if not the candlelight of illumination, at least the beeswax drippings of some kind of achievement.
The next day I rode across hard piste and corrugations to Abri. Some of the corrugations were covered in a fine layer of sand which gave riding on a sports bike a certain three dimensional quality. I do not have any real off-road skills other than taking my last R1 to Timbuktu, but that did the trick. Life is short and whatever it was I needed to learn, I learnt quickly and was floating over the fine wind-borne flotsam scattered before me like a good-un. Whilst riders I know would take this road at almost double my speed, I still hit 70kph.
The road however is only half the story in a desert. The temperature had built steadily all morning and apart from a couple of short stops in isolated villages, I rode until two in the afternoon. The bike was beginning to run at 113 degrees and whenever I stopped, had to keep the engine running to let the fan bring down the engine temperature. By mistake I switched off the bike when I stopped and when I turned it on again, the gauge was blinking 118 and proceeded to rise to 127 degrees. The last time this happened was when I holed the radiator in Australia and is a fraction away from a complete engine seizure. Such is the heat at midday that I could no longer hold onto the levers.
The heat of the air was beginning to take my breath away and to touch the tank would scold my hand. No one to my knowledge had attempted to cross the Nubia in the summer and while it had some noble content, it was an act of poor planning. It was also impossible to wear any motorcycle clothing as the midday temperature had topped 49 degrees in the shade.
To puncture now would have put me in some danger as there was no shade and no appreciable traffic. Also I only had one spanner and no tyres levers should a tyre split on a sharp stone. Still I carried on, determined to make it across this efernal landscape. So hot was the air it carried the minimum of oxygen and between the distant outcrops, and me the air did not even shimmer but simply stood still. By two, I felt the bike might actually break. Because I had been drinking appropriately and my arms were constantly oiled with a severely protective sun block, my own head and cooling mechanisms were working well. When that mechanism cracks, as it once did in Hyderabad, it can be fatal….to be continued (buy the book!)