Longest bike ride ever bike ride

So I'm not going to go through the same rigmarole where I say "I'm so sorry I haven't blogged, but it's this person's/cat's pregnancy scare/job/internet going down's/etc's fault." I respect you all too much for excuses.

...But really, it is the fault of those things. No doubt.

Okay, on with a long overdue post. Let's start with a few updates:

1. Oball's not preggers...turns out it was just worms. After a lot of cat vomit and other such good times, she seems to be back to her old self. And look, here she is RIGHT NOW as I'm composing this on our computer:
2. And you may notice I cut off the majority of my hair.

3. Andrew and I will be back in Springer for Thanksgiving. Tickets are purchased and I encourage anyone looking for the BEST TIME OF HIS OR HER RESPECTIVE LIFE to join a gang of fun loving SHS Alums at KJ's - word.

Right so the bike ride! As many of you know, Lilongwe, while a relatively sleepy capitol, is only an hour and a half (by car) from Lake Malawi (which is really beautiful). Anyway, Andrew and I had this great idea - "why don't we just ride our bikes to the lake!" Note that this was said with one (1) bike ride under our belts SINCE WE GOT TO MALAWI. Also of note, the road to the lake, not flat.

But we thought, ahhh, let's do it. Here are some photos to give you a sense of how pumped up we were before the trip:
Wahoo! Look how excited we are! Lifting up our bikes, big smiles under snug helmets - let's hit the road!

*********

...SEVEN HOURS LATER we arrive at the lake. I should add here that we honestly thought it would take 4 to 5 hours. Holy my moly, it's hard for me to think of a time when I've been that tired, thirsty, hungry and really, almost numb.

And here's the real kicker - we hadn't made reservations at a hotel (the plan was to spend the night) and the two hotels we tried (how predictable) had NO VACANCY. Perfection.

So there we are in Senga Bay at 4pm - the sun will go down in an hour and a half, we're so freakin tired, hotels are full, what are we going to do? Then we see our good friend, the lorey conductor and a plan comes together:
Right so we'll ride to the next town in the back of this truck and then find a matatu/minibus back to Lilongwe. There was a nice group already in the truck with their respective goods:

Man with plastic bottles...

Man with some nice fish. He offered us this one for 1000 Malawi Kwatcha which gave everyone a good laugh - that's about 5 times as expensive as it should be, or about $5 dollars. But what got people laughing even more was when we said we were vegetarians - always a crowd pleaser here where NO ONE is a vegetarian (certainly not by choice).

And this lady definitely looked excited to be seated next to Andrew...uhh...
I actually enjoyed the open aired lorey, but like all good things, it had to come to an end. The best part: we had to ride to the taxi park. Getting back on my bike was excruciating on the rear, but when I saw our ride to Lilongwe, I knew it was well worth it.
As you can see from the shot below, we had to buy some extra seats for our bikes, but the ride itself was lovely.
We made a nice big dinner at our house and hit the hay early.

Then came the next day which I think is well wrapped up in this photo (literally taken as I walked out of bed the next morning).
All in all though, a really fun day and nice to meet all those muscles in my rear that I had no idea even existed.