Dakar to St. Louis, Senegal — Took off this morning at the very early hour, for me, of 715am. Indeed, that’s the earliest I’ve ever started out by at least an hour. (I’m just not an early morning person anymore. I tell myself it’s just temporary as I always loved seeing the dawn and getting a…

Just about to leave Dakar… Heading to St. Louis, Senegal and beyond / Day 10 West Africa, Day 136 — It’s all falling into place for a smooth departure tomorrow. Hope to be on the bike and rolling out of L’Hostella Francesca, my home while here in Dakar, by 7am latest. This’ll give me 3 hours of relatively cool weather before the serious stuff begins. That’ll be another 2 hours…

Motorcycle repaired! Jerrycan procured, fixer for border crossing arranged, and jettisoning of stuff to make room for fuel and water — Sometimes I put off an errand or an activity that’s so crucial that if it doesn’t work out, it’ll be a bummer. Such was the case with picking up my motorcycle. …

Back to Dakar, Back on the Road Again after a 17-day hiatus — It was meant to be a quick 5 day round trip to Paris to pick up the replacement disk clutch. The justification for the cost being the savings in time in Dakar that the 2 week delivery time for the part would have taken. But once in Paris with my…

Dakar / 0 miles — Monday morning brought the unwelcome news that my disk clutch will need to be replaced. Marmadue (sounds like Marmaduke without the K), the kind owner of Mad Bikes, showed me in detail how some of the gears were worn off one of the 7 or 8 ‘gear disks’… The barest…

Dakar/ 0 miles — Sunday, woke up feeling way off emotionally. The news from yesterday finally sunk in. Even my morning Mojo, my coffee, failed to give me the usual positive jolt. Ille NGor is a tiny island about a half mile away from mainland Dakar. I took the ‘public boat’ to cross it…

Dakar/ 0 miles — Strange intense dreams. Sometimes I’m much younger in these dreams. Sometimes my age. Often they’ll revolve around material security and the lack of it. Or efforts to pass a college course, or an internship, but at my age. I seem to always be falling behind, can’t keep up. At one…

Dakar/ 0 miles — Magnifique! I arrived at the airport and my 2 fixers had done all the work. The carnet de passage (a document used to import motorcycles temporarily into countries one’s visiting) was signed and stamped and all that had to be done was to receive the bike. …

Dakar / 0 miles — Woke up to a lavish breakfast spread put on by the surprisingly (as it doesn’t look like much from the outside) hip and excellent Hotel Internationale. An awful location as you can’t really walk anywhere with a sense of security, but the hotel itself is a nice surprise. Took my…