Posts Tagged ‘TEAM DAI’

Here’s a roughly drawn map of Team Dai‘s route. Day 1: Purple Day 2: Red Day 3: Green View Team Dai 2010 in a larger map

Amazingly we experienced very few casualties – human or mechanical. Every bike and every rider made it to the finish line, not necessarily in top form, but that didn’t matter. Over three days, we had a total of four flat tires, fortunately belonging to riders who – unlike me – knew how to fix them. [...]

Our three-day bicycle trek ultimately dropped us in Xieng Khuang Province, which is generally known for two things: unexploded ordnance (UXO) and the Plain of Jars. Here’s what the Lonely Planet guidebook says about UXO in Xieng Khuang: Unexploded munitions, mortar shells, white phosphorus canisters (used to mark bomb targets), land mines and cluster bombs [...]

Day Three Despite my muscles screaming in protest, I somehow mustered enthusiasm comparable to our first day’s adrenaline rush. Maybe it was the knowledge that it would all be over soon. Maybe it was the promise that the last 35 kilometers would be flat (which turned out to be a massive lie). Maybe it was [...]

Day Two I had been dreading this day since I first heard of Team Dai. Riders from the two previous years told horror stories about the road between Vang Vieng and Phou Koun. “Oh sure, you don’t ride as many kilometers that day,” they’d say in hushed voices, “but it’s straight up the whole way. [...]

It’s the weekend, and I’m only just starting to feel like myself again. After cycling for three days, my abdominal muscles apparently locked in a crunch position and my hamstrings simply went on strike. We got back to Vientiane Tuesday afternoon, and I spent the rest of my week’s vacation lolling around the house, occasionally [...]

This is the distance recorded by my bike computer over the three days that Team Dai rode from Vientiane to Phonsavanh. That’s 420.66 kilometers or 261.38 miles! Woo hoo! Here’s a shot of me walking the last few meters to our hotel on a ridge overlooking Phonsavanh. We had stopped in town for ice cream, [...]

Remember back in January? When I rode 50 miles? And it was such a big freakin’ deal? Today, I got home from the Team Dai training ride, checked my bike computer’s odometer and felt a wee bit disappointed that we only rode 93 kilometers (almost 58 miles). How crazy is that? This was my best [...]

This is how far I rode my bike yesterday. In case you can’t see the decimal point on the dirty bike computer, that’s 151.84 kilometers, or 94 miles! Sunday’s Team Dai training ride took us back to Dansavanh (see the Jan. 24 post). This time, however, we pedaled all the way there before tackling the [...]

Here’s the fund-raising poster for Team Dai. I’ve been training with this team for a big cycling challenge that will take place March 6-8 to raise money for three fantastic Lao organizations. Here are some of my concerns: (a) I’m easily the slowest rider, which means people often have to wait for me. (b) Being [...]