Spiros stumbled onto the Tour D’Afrique website in 2004. Seeing Africa had always been a dream, but to do it on bike?…What could be better then that! We knew instantly that we had to do it one day. We wondered what it must be like to be at the foot of the pyramids about to embark on such an exciting adventure, imagined cycling by Mount Kilimanjaro and Victoria Falls, biking past a herd of elephants and finally rolling into Cape Town after pedaling our way through Africa. We talked about it…a lot. But it was always a far away dream, something we would do one day. For now, we would have to be content with our daydreams.
Then came Christmas 2006. That morning, Spiros insisted on opening all his gifts first. Couple of travel photography books, some small items, some sweatpants…and we were done. Next, my turn. First a heart rate monitor wrapped in the map of the Vancouver Marathon. (I had a goal of running the 2007 marathon). I thought…”YEEHAH” and “Damn, outdone again!” all at the same time. Next were two Lonely Planet books about Africa wrapped in the Tour D’Afrique brochures. I should have gotten suspicious here, but I interpreted that to be a “One day, we’ll do this” message. Then a cycling shirt with a note saying I would look great cycling through Africa in this. Still, I’m not suspicious. I start cleaning up when he said…”Wait, one more”. I looked in the gift bag and found an envelope taped to the bottom. “No way”, I thought, “He didn’t. That would be way too big!!” We had talked about doing it in 2010 but when I opened it, there it was; the registration confirmation for the Tour D’Afrique. I’m a tough chick about to cycle through Africa and I have to keep up appearances. I will not admit to any blubbering and/or hyperventilating…honest…it did not happen….really.
So, that’s it folks. For Christmas 2006, Spiros handed me a trip I had been dreaming about for years and I got him pants…SWEATPANTS. Lucky boy, huh? Yes, I’m embarrassed for me too. He claims it was just a clever attempt to avoid going to the shopping mall but, call me crazy, I suspect there was more to it than that.
Quitting your jobs, figuring out how to pay for a trip likes this, etc takes some time. In reality, we weren’t sure we would be able to do the Tour D’Afrique in 2008, until many, many months after this story took place. But this is when we stopped thinking “some day” and started thinking “now”.
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