Pam Sbar biking through the Great Rift Valley in Kenya.(Photo provided)
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When biking across a continent, to say there are a few bumps along the road is an understatement.
“It often reached a point where it’s just combat biking,” said Whitefish resident Pam Sbar, when telling the story of her recent expedition across Africa.
“One thing I’ve learned with travel is that you have a framework – you know what you know – and you have to just blow that up. It quickly falls away… and you have to keep pushing,” Sbar said.
The cross-continental trip of a lifetime, full of unpredictable terrain, began in Cairo, Egypt, in January and ended in May in South Africa.
The group of riders Sbar went with averaged 75 miles a day and 5,856 miles total. Roughly 900 of those miles were on gravel. Over the trip, they climbed 248,953 vertical feet.“Throughout I just kept thinking, ‘How will I describe this to anyone?’ So, I started keeping a list of words on my phone,” Sbar said.Extreme, eye-opening, determination, grit, euphoria, comfort with discomfort, exuberance and exhaustion were just a few of those words.But if there’s one thing Sbar hopes people can take away from this story, it’s that “you can do way more than you think you can,” Sbar said.“And age is not a limit,” Sbar said, who turned 66 while she was on the trip.“I had wanted to do this ride for over a decade, and finally I thought, if not now, when?” […]
Continue reading the original article at: whitefishpilot.com