August 8, 2024
It isn’t an adventure if something doesn’t go wrong! That well-worn phrase can sound like a platitude when you’re fixing a flat tire in the rain or the trail you’ve been following for two hours suddenly ends. And in some circumstances it is, but it’s also true that the detours and fixes on the fly can end up making your adventure.
Abby Popplestone and Isabel Riffel both had adventures go wildly pear-shaped when far, far away from home (coincidentally, both were exploring Africa for the first time). Even though their circumstances were very different, in the end the adventure they each had was even better than the adventure they’d planned… and it was all thanks to things going “wrong”.
In October 2023, Abby Popplestone jumped on the last-minute opportunity to join her friend on a bike touring trip through Africa. Their route started in Cape Town, South Africa, and they planned to wend their way in a northeasterly direction together through Namibia, Botswana, Zambia, Malawi, Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania. They set off with the weight of other people’s fear on their shoulders, but a couple of days in and they’d already shaken off the stereotypes. Africa was beautiful. They felt welcome. They were safe!
Everything was going according to plan, exceeding their expectations even… until they reached Zambia. Visa issues hit. A couple of specialist bike tools got pickpocketed and Abby was forced to wait it out in Lusaka until her visa documentation came through. With dwindling time and not much to actually do in Lusaka, her co-adventurer forged ahead. But a couple of days turned into a couple of weeks and the original plan to meet up en route and continue together became less and less realistic. Suddenly, Abby found herself alone with her thoughts and the looming prospect of cycling through a whole new part of Africa (one with less infrastructure and more wilderness) solo.
Her confidence wobbled. Her anxieties reared up and engulfed her. “What if the worst happens and I can’t cope?” she asked herself over and over. But by this stage in her journey, the same people who warned her about the risks and dangers for a woman cycling through Africa, were suddenly egging her on. So, shaky confidence and all, she struck out alone for Malawi, and she’ll be forever grateful that she did. “Sometimes the worst case things did happen, but in the moment I was able to handle them.” Said worst case scenarios included running out of water in unbearable heat, 20 kilometers from her destination; challenging mechanicals in remote areas; and emotional wobbles far away from home – but she tackled each one as it came. “Every day and with every fresh challenge I got stronger and braver. Each day I was proving to myself that I can do it.”
In retrospect, Abby’s unanticipated solo ride through East Africa is one of her most cherished experiences, “the second part of this ride ended up being the most transformative part. If you never leave your comfort zone, you don’t learn what you’re capable of. This lesson in resilience is already serving me in the rest of my life. Now I know that I’m capable, that things are figure-outable!”
Seventy two hours before the start of the Race Around Rwanda, komoot marketing manager Isabel Riffel was in Kigali, on the phone to a doctor in Austria. The prognosis was not looking good. Hacking her lungs out over the long-distance line, she couldn’t fool the doctor nor herself that she was well enough to take on the 1000-kilometer, self-supported race. But instead of the disappointment she expected to feel, her body tingled with a sense of relief, not for the sake of her sore throat and achy ribs though, rather for the new sense of opportunity this development revealed.
In the weeks and months leading up to the event, Isabel had taken her training seriously. She wanted to RACE. Her plan was to give it her all: Stay in the front of the pack by riding fast, limiting sleep, and snack breaks. The pressure was on, and as more people discovered her plans, the higher the pressure rose. Until that call. All of a sudden there was no pressure at all, and instead of joining the other riders on the start line, she lay low in Kigali for a few days, recovering.
On the fourth day, Isabel was feeling better and put herself and her bike onto a local bus and made her way to checkpoint three – roughly the halfway point of the official race route. And thus began an amazing adventure she would never have imagined a few weeks previously…
“The people rolling into checkpoint three on day four are those who’ve already given up on the race due to mechanical issues or injury, or the people who never planned to ride competitively – so it was a very different vibe from what I planned.”
“The rules for self-supported racing no longer applied to them so they’d already formed a kind of group. They could accept help when they got a puncture, and take things a bit slower. So yeah, that was very different from the plan but it was actually lovely to have a bunch of people to ride with, and have a little more time to stop here and there. It was a really, really great adventure, and I probably would’ve enjoyed it less if things had gone to plan and I’d gotten to race.”
Abby and Isabel’s experiences are just two examples of adventures not going to plan but they prove that it is indeed true that sometimes things not going according to plan really can be for the better!