This issue of Notes from Outside is a little different. In 2021, Ryan Le Garrec, found himself in a hotel lobby in Kenya, on the brink of quitting the Migration Gravel Race before he even started. One pep talk, a few cigarettes, and 25 cups of coffee later, he came to his senses. He encountered one of the most humbling adventures of his life. Set in Africa and written in a uniquely poetic style, you’re definitely in for something a little different with this month’s issue of Notes from Outside…
Catherine
Editor, Notes from Outside
Nairobi.
Two days before the race.
Hotel lobby.
Am feeling out of place.
I don’t even dare get my bike out of its box.
What if I have a mechanical?
It will just add stress to fix it now.
I don’t want to leave the hotel.
I’m not ready for the bustle of an African town.
Feeling out of place.
Everyone’s wearing their kit,
going for rides.
Looking sharp.
Looking fresh.
Looking pro.
I’m slightly hungover.
I roll a cigarette.
This must be my 25th coffee.
I’m feeling out of place.
I am out of place.
About to be chewed up alive and spit back onto the ground,
crushed like a bug in the Maasai Mara.
I go to Mikel [Delagrange], race organizer.
Tell him how scared I am.
Ask him how scratching works.
He thinks I’m scratching then and there.
Gives me a pep talk.
“The worst thing you can do is to stress before it even starts. You’re going to ride in the Mara man, just think of that!”
The sun beats down.
I’ve been climbing all morning and now, some respite.
Until I notice the tick.
Why did I say yes to this?
I look at that small black creature.
Sucking my blood. Feeding itself.
I regret leaving the tick remover in my suitcase.
I read about African ticks.
Soon my leg will swell, I’ll get a fever, and then…
I’m last on the course.
The sweeper’s motorbike is right behind me.
His job: Close the race. Protect trailing riders from dangerous predators.
Duncan is not MY Maasai bodyguard. But it feels like he is.
He knows the real dangers around.
We haven’t talked much.
I try riding next to him but he always slows down, reestablishing distance.
I know just a tiny bit about him.
But I watch him a lot.
I can’t help it.
He has the look of someone who knows something I don’t.
I know for a fact that he knows a lot more than I do here.
Duncan shares a bit with me about his Maasai culture.
How the boys used to kill lions as a rite of passage into adulthood.
How they spend a lot of time as young men in the forest.
How they live in harmony with the wildlife around them.
He’s probably more concerned about lions than he is about this damn tick on my calf.
I raise my arm, happy he is not far from me.
Show him the tick.
Gesture to express the insect sucking my blood.
He looks at me calmly.
Parks the motorbike.
Comes closer, getting down near my calf.
He pinches my flesh around the tick.
Looks closer, touches it.
“Don’t upset it or it’ll release more poison in my blood,” I want to say.
I don’t speak.
He knows more than I do.
“Dry blood” he says, flicking it away. “A thorn scratched your leg.”
“Why does it hurt like this?” I ask.
“Thorns have poison here, but not too bad.”
Then I see his knee.
A lot of skin is missing.
“Yes, I crashed a bit up there, but not too bad.”
I fuss over a scratch. His knee is ripped off and he barely remembers it.
I feel stupid.
The race is tough.
Rocks and headwinds on day 1.
Day 2, altitude and tricky single tracks.
I ride through it.
Slowly but surely.
Day 3 and day 4, more gravel, more speed.
When the road gets rough again, with rocks the size of my head, giraffes and elephants appear.
Seeing an elephant free in nature takes the edge off a hard ride.
On many levels, this event is not tough though.
Every evening, my tent waits for me at camp.
It’s already pitched, my little suitcase inside.
Luxury.
The local team of bike mechanics fixes anything that needs fixing.
They clean the bike too so every morning it looks brand new.
Luxury.
Each day breakfast is cooked on a wood fire.
Tea and coffee and eggs and toast and sausage.
Luxury.
In the middle of Kenya’s Maasai Mara,
a shower.
A toilet.
Luxury.
“Gravel racers are fast,” I think,
“but they are spoiled too.”
Hotel lobby.
Breakfast.
Feeling down.
The excitement has been replaced by a crash back to normal life.
I ask a fellow rider if he feels kinda down too.
“Yeah. Always after these…” he says.
There’s nothing wrong with me.
I’ve been here before in this very lobby, hungover, wanting to scratch.
Now I don’t want it to be over.
Feels like a different kind of hangover.
See Ryan's Collection from the Migration Gravel Race here.
Words and photos by Ryan Le Garrec
Ryan Le Garrec is a filmmaker and storyteller who discovered adventure cycling through a serendipitous side-gig as a bike messenger. That gig changed his life, and since then his bike accompanies him on almost every adventure, along with his pen and his camera.