Sometimes the most memorable moments in a cycling adventure don’t happen on the roads, but in the airports in between. My plan was to wrap up our African trip with the Men’s World Championship Road Race, but fate — and the realities of travel in and out of Kigali — had other ideas. What started as a frustrating delay quickly turned into an unexpected coda to the adventure: an overstuffed flight, missing luggage, and a surprise cast of fellow travelers that included some of the sport’s biggest names.
My plan was to end my posts from our African cycling adventure with my report from the Men’s World Championship Road Race, but fate — and Africa — provided me with a bit more cycling-flavored content.
I’ve previously gushed about Kigali, that after spending a bit of time there I can glimpse the shoots of what could become a flourishing, modern city — the “African Singapore” that Rwandans aspire to, where order, cleanliness and efficiency facilitate the free flow of talent and commerce.
To get there, though, Kigali’s going to have to do something about its airport.
Today that airport is small and moves sluggishly; lines inch along, especially when the city’s extensive security measures are stacked onto the airport’s lack of automation. As we embarked on our return trip, I saw that the facilities and the crew are very much not equipped to handle big influxes of passengers — or especially of cargo.
Our jammed flight seemed to be on time initially, but then we sat on the runway for long enough that I started to doubt that we’d make our connection in Doha. After sitting longer, the pilot announced — barely audibly — that the wind had shifted; the runways only point in one direction; and that to make a downwind takeoff we’d have to lose some baggage. Soon we watched as handlers slowly took bags upon bags — and bikes upon bikes — off of the plane. Then they loaded some back on…and then unloaded more. All of this over the course of more than two hours. We definitely weren’t making our connection.
During those two hours I walked the aisle to chat with my son and realized we were sharing a flight with much of the Australian men’s team: my son Mack sat a row in front of Jay Vine, in economy (Cycling celebs — they’re just like us!), while Jai Hindley and Chris Hamilton were up in business class. No Bling Matthews to be seen.
This guy sits in economy class?
In Doha we all rushed to figure out how we’d get to our destination cities — not a ton of cyclists or cycling fans end their trips in Qatar — but were told by airline staff to wait in a sort of holding pen: Plenty of seats, yes, but long, spare hallways in three directions, with no food options anywhere. We sat, and stood, and wondered what would happen for nearly three hours; at one point those same staff took our passports.
As we waited I noticed more cyclists: Attila Valter twiddled his phone; Blanka Vas sat patiently. The Aussies clustered away from the rest of us, but when the airline reps began calling names to distribute boarding passes (and to return passports), they stood nearby — and stood, and stood, and I couldn’t help but think they’d want to get off their feet; after all, Il Lombardia is just around the corner.
I heard the name “Katerina Nash” called, and finding her, introduced myself, telling her we used to see her at Northern California cross races. The winter/summer Olympian couldn’t have been nicer! She told me and Mack, who remembered her from those races, that she now works for the UCI, and was also hoping soon to make the long flight back to SFO.
Give credit where it’s due: Qatar Airlines served us up with vouchers for a very nice Doha hotel, plus rides there and both lunch and dinner. At the hotel we formed a travelers’ bond with several of the others: a couple from Spain we’d chatted with roadside during the women’s and men’s road races; a woman named Ann from Toronto who’d combined gorilla-trekking with Worlds; Katerina, who regaled us with stories of riding with Mark Cavendish, meeting with UCI leadership, also viewing the famed gorillas, standing nearby as the Rwandan president presented medals, and pedaling up Mt. Kigali amid massive gathering crowds — all in the last week; and Aussie Hamilton, who also struck us as kind and approachable, chatting about the UAE Tour (and riding in debilitating humidity).
Hamilton in this year’s Giro.
Delayed travel often has a democratizing and humanizing effect: Once people are sleepless, hungry and unshaven, defenses tend to come down. We saw this among our little crew of temporary Dohans, among us some of cycling’s biggest names past and present, not to mention passengers flying first class, business class, and in the back of the plane.
By the time we finally boarded an on-time 16-hour flight to San Francisco, I was very — very — eager to get home, but my new-found friends made the delay just a bit more tolerable. (Though the hotel’s beer offering, a rarity in Qatar, didn’t hurt.)
– Thanks for reading – Mike
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