The last test would be to get from gate to gate in the different airports we were about to embark into. This test was to become a real test but I hadn't realized that yet. SFO was as usual crowded but 2hrs 15 min seemed adequate for us to check everything in and get to the gate. Our American Airlines line was not only long but just creeped forward. We had packed two bikes in each bike box, one Schwinn road bike and one Scott MTB, along with an assortment of equipment, race food and spares. My actual bike box carried only one set of spare wheels and lots of spares and race food. We got through ticketing without too much excess baggage charges and had 30' to get to the gate which without encumbrances was about 3' away, we were still within the zone of making it I felt. Security was next and that was when things started to turn sour. We all went to the same line and all the riders had neatly packed their new tubes of toothpaste and mouthwash in their carry on bags, almost all got the same lady screening them, I didn't and after I had been cleared I started to notice there was some sort of a hang up. Humm a language barrier, so I went to help out the situation.

TEAM Rwanda. Bright yellow, green and blue jackets stood out in the departure lounge of Kigali’s international airport. Rwanda’s young national cycling team was on the move once more, returning from 12th place in their first African Games, held in Algiers, and now flying on to continental championships for mountain-biking in Namibia.

The friend I was travelling with, a former Olympic cyclist, spotted a familiar face in the group.

Jonathan “Jock” Boyer is a former Tour de France competitor, the first American to compete in the French classic, with a best finish in his five attempts of 12th in 1983. Based in the southern Rwandan university town of Butare, Boyer spends more than half his year in Rwanda, managing, organising and riding with the team.

With an annual budget of just $150,000 obtained mostly from private individuals, Boyer has high hopes for the team’s future. He reckons that in just two years the Rwandans will be good enough to tackle the international circuit. “The future of new cycling talent is likely to come from Africa, which has until now been relatively unexploited.”

We were on a mission, next stop Tucson where Monday morning we were to pick up a new Ford Econoline 18 passenger van from Jim Click Ford. The desert locomotives with their 100+ cars followed us through the New Mexican and Arizonan landscape with the riders fixated on these immense machines. At one point, I stopped and we waited at a RR crossing as the locomotive came barreling down towards us. Only Abraham was brave enough to approach the crossing to feel the ground shake and to watch up close as it thundered by.