Today I was able to test five local riders in Butare, the town where I live. The crew found out about the testing from other riders and wanted in! ‚"Rambo" (Alphonse Museruka), who has been riding with us, joined the test. He is a retired soldier working as a security guard in town.

After a few riders were tested, it was Rambo's turn. I was surprisedthat he measured only 5'1", although with a seat height of 83.5 cm, he should have measured over 6'2"! Remember that he sports size 11 tennis shoes and rides a pink 7 speed Bianchi in such sad shape that any of us couldn’t give it away even at a garage sale. I was not able to make any adjustments to it for fear of breaking a part or causing it to fall off. Yet, he has a surprisingly good torque angle and his Computrainer Spinscan was not expected for a guy in tennis shoes that barely holds onto the platform pedals. These incredible handicaps did not prevent him from pushing 300 watts on the AT test either! At 28, he is one of the older riders , but will make an incredibly loyal and valuable teammate. He is the type of rider that you tell to catch the breakaway ahead and he would not give up until it was caught.

It was very clear that the other riders in this group are not as experienced as the first group, probably did not ride as often or have not had as much racing experience. The bikes -- if you could believe it -- were in worse shape than all that I have tested up thus far; several had to borrow a bike to do the test as theirs were not fit enough to do the test or the tires were too big for the Computrainer. Predictably, the test results were not nearly at the level of the first group. The condition of their bikes was certainly a factor, but inexperience with both riding and racing resulted in lower drive and less of a fitness level.

There are a few additional riders from here that I will be testing next week. One, Abraham Komizera, has won the Tour of Rwanda twice and is reputedly the best rider in Rwanda. He is short with a very solid build. I've invited him several times to ride with us but he demurred because his bike is "broken". He did promise that he will ride with us this weekend. That should be something to see!

Ten riders arrived Friday, and as mentioned I put them up at the "Saint Jean Batiste Center" across from the RC Church. Very nice place, clean inexpensive, hot water and good food. It was about $22/person/night including three meals! I let one local rider eat with the riders while they were here. They left today Monday back to Kigali, I went half way with them.

The riders all had packs, (you will see the photos), all rode together the 78 miles from Kigali, one rode with tennis shoes and three others had just toeclips and sort of soccer shoes. All the bikes with the exception of Adrie''s and Rafiki''s bike were from the 80''s, with mismatches of parts, wheels and components, one still had a five speed straight block with the last gear not acessable. And again all but Rafiki and Adrie had brutal positions, either too long, seat wacky or something like that. Surprisingly most of the seat heights were pretty good. I was afraid to adjust anything and refrained because it was apparent that if I touched anything on their bikes it would lead to a complete disaster that I did not have the parts to remedy. Many seatposts had shims, the allen key binder bolts had long been replaced by rusty bolts and nuts, I had the misfortune of trying to switch pedals on one bike and found that the axle was welded to the crankarm and was unthreading the threads as I was removing it, whoa, I stopped in time luckly. I am amazed that they are able to brake or shift, I don''t think th at the chains have ever been changed and the pads are long from being original. I was surprised to see Campy brakes and Campy parts on the Eddy Merckx''s though they were being held from vibrating by rubber bands.