Today we have a guest blogger, my travel companion Adam McQueen:

I’ll be taking over for John today to provide a different perspective and give John a little break.

Some days start off better than others.  We were due for a stretch of bad luck since John embraced the local superstition and rubbed the gold dog on St. Charles bridge expecting good luck.  Those things never work.  So, against all logic, reason, experience and advice, we took the Smart Car into town again.  And what would have been a 10 minute tram ride turned into an hour drive.  As I tried to navigate us to a large American style breakfast we ended up on a pedestrian only street.  We passed a cop going the other way and when he didn’t flag us down we hoped we were safe.  Not so.  There were a couple cops on foot that pulled us over on the other end of the square.  1000 Kč later we finally found some parking and got breakfast served by a nice Czech woman doing a terrible Irish accent.

That’s the last time we drive in Prague.

After breakfast we drove out to the amazing Czech countryside.  Its tough to still be irritated about a traffic fine while cruising down tiny tree lined back roads through towns untouched by tourists.

We ended up at Konopiste, the home of Archduke Franz Ferdinand before his famous assassination.  The archduke was an avid hunter and had over 100,000 mounts lining the halls and rooms of his castle.  The only way to see the inside is on a guided tour and the only guided tours were in Czech.  So I am sure there are many interesting facts about the duke or the castle, but we don’t know what they are.  It was worth it to see the huge collection of trophys and weapons.

From there we set out again across the country side to Sedlec Ossuary.  Over 40,000 people unknowingly contributed to the macabre art within.  The small chapel was filled with pyramids, banners and a chandelier all made exclusively from human bones.  It was hard for me to connect these intricate displays with the idea that these bones once had names, parents, and dreams.  The poorly translated info guide had a surprisingly evangelical tone, which seemed out of place in a town with many lingering affects from the decades of communism. 

As we made our way back to Prague we stopped in Kutna Hora for some groceries and beer.  John really needed some dark beer and it’d been a few days since I’d sampled some local blue cheese.  You have to rent grocery carts just like the lugage trolleys at cheap airports.

After getting completely lost on the way back into town, we finally made it to Natalie’s apartment to hang out, watch the UEFA championship and just relax.

Today we didn’t do quite as much as previous days. We hung around Natalie’s apartment till 1:00 and then went out for lunch. On the way out we saw an army surplus store that had a confederate flag flying out side. Not what we expected to see in Eastern Europe.

So after lunch we walked around Prague for a bit and just took it in. One thing that caught our eye was how they tow vehicles. They don’t tow them, they just lift them off the ground and put them on the back of a truck and drive away with them. This is a little scary when you drive a 231lb Smart Car and they’re picking up a full size SUV.

Then Adam and I drove around the northern end of Prague looking for a shooting range we never found. That was kinda a bummer, and then we hit some horrible traffic trying to get back into town and got lost for a while.

After an hour we finally met back-up with Natalie. From there we had dinner at a great little place and then continued to tour Prague at night. We saw some really great squares and ended the night with a drink in a bar that was in some underground catacombs. It was way cool. On the walk home to the tram we got rained on and the temperature had dropped a little. I was very happy to get to wear my jacket for the first time since being stateside in November. I miss occasional cold weather.

We started out day 3 in Tuebingen, Germany. We had spent the night at the Globalscope Germany campus house. Chandler Creel was kind enough to show us around the town. In the morning he and some other fellow GT-CCF alumni were working on the walkway to the house, so to avoid hard work Adam and I grabbed some pastries and headed for Stuttgart.

In Stuttgart we tried to find the Mercedes museum, but it seemed to be too much work. I found a DHL office and mailed in a broken part from the X-ray machine in the dental clinic in Monrovia. This is how things get fixed in Africa. Someone takes them to Europe and mails them in from there. Right as we were leaving Stuttgart we saw a sign on an exit that said “Porsche” instantly Adam drove across traffic, and we were in heaven. We didn’t feel like paying to go in the museum, so we were quite happy to just walk around the show room. We picked out colors, trim, and rims. It was way cool. We then drove on to Prague.

Along the way we stopped at a Burger King on the side of the road. Adam was disappointed that were weren’t having a “cultural experience”, but I was happy to have a first world experience that reminded me of home. We also got a little scared when we saw signs to prepay for toll roads. We thought we were just flying through the electronic payment stations. Then we asked someone and they said it was only for lorries, so we were all right. Close call.

On the last stretch before Czech the inevitable happened, we got pulled over. It was so refreshingly pleasant. After spending the last year and a half dealing with law enforcement officers that only want bribes, and not justice, meeting two of Germany’s finest who were just checking a rental car from Belgium before it got to the Czech Republic was so nice. They were in an unmarked Audi and pulled up behind us and followed us for a while. Then they pulled in front of us and a little LED screen popped up from their trunk and told us to pull over. It was way slick. If the LNP only knew. They both spoke perfect English and were very nice. They just asked for passports and if we had any drugs or weapons. We laughed and said, “No.” They started to search our bags, but then just looked at them and said, “yeah it’s OK.” They asked how far we had come and where we were going, and then told us we needed a bigger car. No mention of us going 140kmh (86mph) when we passed them. And then we were off.

At around 7:00pm we pulled into Natalie’s place in Prague. Her place is way sweet. The man who owns the apartment complex is an architect, and the apartment she has the owner built for himself, so it’s way nice. Natalie and I went for a drink in Prague to get a sense of the city and Adam stayed home and researched BMW options for the drive home.

Today we left Huy, Belgium and headed south on some great back country roads to Luxembourg. Along the way we came across some old logging trails and tested out the off road capabilities of the smart car. Needless to say we got it stuck. It seems the wheel base of the smart car is the same as the stance of a regular car, so our ride got stuck perpendicular to the ruts in the road. Thankfully the car weights nothing, so Adam put a log under the car and just leveraged the back wheels off the ground so i could push it around till we got it out.

In Luxembourg I ate at a Tex-Mex restaurant. I was in heaven. Fajitas with sour cream. What more could you want? We also had some great ice cream and then hit the road. Luxembourg seemed really cool, and less touristy that Brussels. I’ve also been noticing that everyone in Europe has sweet motorcycles. It really makes me wana buy one in Liberia, but they’re way too expensive and hard to find. I finally checked off a life goal of driving on the autobahn today, but it was in a smart car that was electronically limited to 150kmh, so I’ll need to keep working on that.

We stopped in Bitche, France where we saw the Bitche fort, then we drove through Germany to Tuebingen where we’ll be staying the night. In Tuebingen is a campus ministry that affiliated with the campus ministry I went to at Georgia Tech. It’s so nice having friends in cool places.

Yeah I know. I haven’t even finished writing up my motorcycle trip and now I’ve started another epic journey. What can I say. After this I doubt I’ll get any more vacation time for the rest of the year. And I am working on the motorcycle trip, I just have to take advantage of this fast internet while I have it.

So the back ground story, Adam McQueen, college friend, and I agreed to spend two weeks traveling Europe together, and most of that hanging out in Prague where I know Ms. Natalie Van Hoose, who teaches English there, and kindly agreed to put us up.

Both Adam and I knew that we were too busy with our lives to plan for this trip. So when I flew into BRU at 5:00am that’s when we started planning. Adam had seen a rental car shop advertise a Smart Car for 10 Euros a day. This is what I like about Adam, he sees a good idea and goes with it. Needless to say we waited till the rental agency opened up and reserved a smart car for two weeks for 525 euros.

The lady at the rental place was super helpful and told us if we took the train to Antwerpen we wouldn’t have to pay the 100euro airport fee. so we took the train to Antwerpen, then a bus, but then ended up 5km in the wrong direction. Adam stuck out his thumb and in 30 seconds we were picked up by the first passer by who loved that Adam was an American from TX.

We get to the car place and they didn’t have the keys for the car. So they talked to the airport office who paid for a taxi to take us back to the airport where we got out smart car, minus the airport service fee. Such customer service just doesn’t exist where I come from. Thanks Sixt Rentals!!

Then we drove around Brussels, got lost, probably broke some traffic laws, and saw all the important sites in Brussels, whcih aren’t many. Then we hit the road trying to make it to Germany. We soon realized that we were both exhausted from our travels and ended up heading to Huy, Belgium to stay with some friends of Adams, Clay and Megan.

Huy is awesome. It’s the small little town that’s so perfect, no tourist, no gimmiks just small town europe. After being in Monovia where there’s effectively no tourism, seeing all the manufactured restaurants and shops in Brussels made me a little sick, but Huy is perfect. It’s so laid back, the beer is amazing the food is good and the feel is incredible. Check out this amazing view from Clay and Megan’s apartment.

And that’s all for today. Join us tomorrow when we head to Germany.  If you want a preview of what’s to come check out our tenative route.

We needed to “officially” start the retracing of Graham Greene’s journey by going to Foya, Lofa County, Liberia. So we left Voinjama and headed to Foya. Since we had to pass back through Voinjama, Jeff and I left our bags with Johnny. This was great since now I had no extra weight on my bike, so I just flew down the road. I think I did most of the damage to my bike at this point. Jeff was a little slower than before, but he still kept up just fine. It was tons of fun to fly over rocks and wash outs and just throw the bike around. It also really made me wish I was on a Honda 450 and not a Chinese POS 150.

Foya was super cool. It had even more of a Wild West border town feel than Voinjama, probably because it really is a border town. We had a great fried egg, mayo, and avocado sandwich at a Fula tea shop. The streets were dusty and had shops and stalls up and down them. It felt like we had gone quite far from Monrovia and the civilized world.  The picture to the left if the main road in Foya. As you can see it’s pretty empty, not tall buildings or anything, just dust, shacks, and blue sky. The picture on the right is taken from the tea shop we had lunch in.

On the way back to Voinjama we stopped off at a church mission that Mr. Greene had stopped at. That was pretty cool. We met a couple father’s there who were very cool. They had were older and had been in Liberia long before the war. It was really neat talking to them because you got a sense of how the country was before the war. They were all well spoken and obviously well educated. It just made you realize how nice the country had been once upon a time, that people were educated as well as these gentlemen. They stood in contrast to the younger people you meet in Monrovia. The campus was also very beautiful. I’m sure before the war it was absolutely amazing. Jeff and I had been on the road Easter Sunday, so we asked the senior father to bless us and he did. That was really cool. I love hearing older folks with lots of experience praying and things like that. It’s so cool. The picture on the right is of the main church building on the mission.

Since we didn’t have bags and were driving faster the riding was rather intense. That’s not to say that it’s not usually intense on these roads, but it was especially so. One thing I noticed after driving for a while on these roads while trying to keep the bike at 50kmh is that it just cleans out your head. You don’t have the capacity for high level reasoning and thinking. No, “I wonder what she meant by that the other night?” pondering. Instead all you can think is, “left, left. Speed up, Slow down, get out of the left lane, get out of the left lane, wash out, slow down, slow down, lean right…” Like I’d get off my bike and then become aware of bug bites that I had gotten 20 minutes ago. I’d totally lose track of my thoughts and just concentrate of riding. It felt very purifying. I did have time for some quick simple thoughts like “that’s cool looking,” “Where’s Jeff?”, and “Man this is awesome.”

So after riding for what felt like all day we made it back to Voinjama. We had lunch with Johnny and then hit the road to Zorzor. Zorzor is about 7km from Guinea and he plan was to overnight there, giving us all day to cross into Guinea. The ride to Zorzor felt like it took forever and I noticed that my front wheel was really, really bent up. That’s what you get for trying to shot down hills with volleyball size rocks in the way at 40kmh. On the way to Zorzor we stopped back in at Kortie Town where this child was kind enough to give me a bit of a back massage. There was some confusion between punching my back and chopping my back, but we worked it out.

We got into Zorzor right at dusk and met up with Zaezae.  I was exhausted. Zaezae knew jeff since he worked with the Justice and Peace Commission and they partnered with the Carter Center on things.  Zaezae had a really nice house that we stayed in. To the left you see Jeff with Zaezae and his family. To the right is me totally whipped out after the ride. Notice the dust highlight I had added to my hair and face, very fashionable.
Chelsea, the British football(soccer) club, had a big game that night so Zaezae went to a video club to watch the action on DSTV while Jeff an I chilled out at a quieter venue. Zaezae walked into the video club, saw that it was 0-4, left in disgust, and hung out with us. I should point out that European Soccer is huge here. People can have their whole week wrecked if the wrong team loses. None the less, I made fun of him for being a fair weather fan. Sure enough, an hour later people ran up saying it was tied 4-4. Jeff and I also admired the battle depicted on the wall of the bar we were at. Club beer Vs. Stout, who would win?

When we woke on day 2 in Kortie Town we had another shower and breakfast and then walked over to Dougamai, the big village in the area. We saw the graves of chiefs and other great men in the middle of town, and met some palm wine tappers. Before getting back on the road I got to hold the youth chiefs “single barrel.” I finally realized that Liberian hunters use single barrel breach break shotguns and not hunting rifles. Needless to say I enjoyed this moment.

So we finally made it to Voinjama around 12pm. We were met by Johnny who was a professional surveyor and had done work for the Carter Center and other organizations to evaluate various things. He had even had experience with surveys on PDAs. Something I’ve had an interest in lately. Johnny was a really great, really sharp guy, and we had a lot of fun with him. First we took our bikes to a local mechanic, he was just a kid who didn’t speak English very well. Jeff’s bike needed a lot of fixing after the wreck, I wanted my kick stand fixed and a fender was starting to come loose so I wanted that taken care of before it got worse. After communicating our needs we had lunch and then just walked around Voinjama.

Voinjama was great. It had such a wonderful wild west frontier town feel. A few county seats in Liberia have at least one or two paved roads, but voinjama was all dust, and some of buildings even had facades that seemed sort of western. We drank tea, went to the top of “pak bat hill”, a hill overlooking all of Voinjama.

At the end of the day we went back to the mechanics place and picked up our bikes. We had a lot of ground to cover the next day so we wanted the bikes back before dark. To the left is Mohamed, the mechanic that worked on the bikes. He was a really nice kid.  And I really liked this photo of this kid posing by an engine that’s supposed to be in the process of being rebuilt.

Last year I was approached by Jeff Austin, a good friend who works for the Carter Center in Harper, he wanted to know if I’d be down with retracing the steps of Graham Greene as recorded in his book Journey Without Maps on motorcycles. Obviously, I said yes. It took us a little while to work out our schedules, but after a while we picked April 12th – 18th. Well, we actually picked the 11th-18th, but Jeff had some flight issues getting to Monrovia, so we pushed it back a day. I’m planning on writing this trip up day by day, and as always I’m like 3 weeks behind. So just bear with me. Days 2-7 will come, sooner or later, probably later. In the mean time enjoy the video and here’s a Google Earth file of our trip.

I was rolling on my Chinese made 150cc “jungle bike.” Jeff was riding an Indian 100cc TVS Star. Check out the sweet external fuel tank we rigged up. We started off at 7am from Monrovia. We stopped for gas at the last Total station on the way out of town. Unfortunately, I had a catastrophic kickstand failure while putting air in my front tire. It was kind of a bummer.  It seemed that a nut had fallen off the bolt that holds the kickstand in place. We also had to wait for all the fluids in the engine to drain back down before the engine would start again. But after 15 minutes of waiting the bike started, and before we drove through red light we found a place on the side of the road that had a replacement bolt, so we were off.

The road past red light was pretty good and I was quickly doing my bikes top speed, a whopping 85kmh. Things went pretty well, though I did manage to pull out the tube from my CamelBack causing me to have a very wet backside for a while. Thankfully, I was in Liberia and I dried off in about 20 minutes. Our first stop was the Booker Washington Institute (BWI). BWI is a technical school outside of Kakata, Margibi County. Jeff’s mom had a friend, who had a relative, who had a memorial at BWI. So we went there looking for the only white guy who had a memorial. As you can see, we found it. I should know the name of the buy, but I don’t. He was the first principal of BWI, and is also buried on the campus.

We next headed up to Gbanga,Bong County to the Carter Center office there. Jeff had already been in touch with the staff at that location so we could stop in for lunch. When we got there Nyan, the man in charge on the ground in Gbanga, met us and provided us with a wonderful lunch of rice and soup. We also saw Arthur who had driven Jeff, his mother, and I around Bong mines a year ago. To the right you see the group shot from lunch.

After Gbanga we wouldn’t see a paved road until Guinea. However, the road from Gbanga to Lofa was very good. We were able to reach the Lofa County border in very little time. Here‘s a shot of Jeff and I on the bridge over the Lofa River as we were crossing over. It was really pretty and very exciting for Jeff and I as this was the first time either of us had been to Lofa county.

From the border of Gbanga and Lofa we headed to Zorzor. There we fueled up inquired about the road condition and decided to press on and try and reach Voinjama by night fall. As a note I just want to say how awesome it is to have stop and asked about road conditions before traveling. It just feels so hardcore and exciting. I remember in college going on a road trip with friends from Atlanta to New Orleans, but we didn’t have to ask how I-20 was, did it get washed out, were all the bridges still there. Though I guess that still might not be true of New Orleans, so that’s a bad example. But you get the point. That element of adventure is lost in American Interstate based road trips
So we headed out. We were flying down and up some pretty bumpy and rocky roads. We had to balance finding smooth paths through the mine field of baseball size stones and wash outs, and staying on our side of the road. These dirt roads are one lane, and if some SUV comes flying over a hill, you had better be on your side of the road.

Jeff had been practicing off road driving in Harper and was riding pretty hard. I was impressed that I could barely keep up with him when he was on a bike with a smaller engine that wasn’t made for such off road conditions. I was thinking that all that practice was paying off. I was also thinking that I should ask him to slow it down a notch till I had my high speed off-road motorcycling down. Well before I could mention this to Jeff, I looked up and saw his back wheel buck-up into the air and then the whole bike went sideways as Jeff flew off. Jeff had hit a patch of loose gravel and lost control. Thankfully there was a wide enough distance between the two of us that I didn’t hit him. I pulled up and checked on him. He wasn’t hurt bad but was a little shaken up. He had scraped up his arm pretty bad, but no major injuries.  Luckily there was already a nurse at the village where the wreck took place. He was there helping someone who had had a machete accident. So he jumped over and took control of the situation. He was pretty cool. I love seeing old guys who have that confidence from years of experiences reign in a situation, “Get me some water. You two pick up the bike, put it there. You get some alcohol. You come with me. Where does it hurt? Can you bend your arm?” After 45 minutes or so we were back on the road. Jeff’s bike was rideable but the handle bars were bent a little bit and the instrument panel was damaged. We were now pretty late and night was coming so we continued on, but slower.

After a while it was getting dark and we could see and hear a storm coming in from the East. Jeff and I realized that we weren’t going to make Voinjama ahead of the storm, so we decided to ride to the next big village and ask for lodging. It was pitch black when we rolled up to the next village. We could barely see the huts in the moonlight as the storm crept over. I had to fight with my kick stand so Jeff made it to the village before I did. When I got there he was already drinking palm wine with the elders. I don’t think we ever asked for anything. They just talked to us about what we were doing and where we were going, and that we wouldn’t make it, then we were told to park our bikes inside a hut’s porch, then asked if we wanted hot water for a shower, and to wait a minute and rice would be coming. It was such a sweet hook-up. Everyone was so welcoming, kind and generous. My favorite thing was that no one spoke of money, let alone asked for anything. We needed a place to stay and they were just helping out. We ended up sleeping in one of the bedrooms of the village youth chief’s hut. It was really nice. We had a bed and mosquito net.  The picture at the top is me and one of the guys in the village with his “African head lamp.” After talking for a while we realized that we were in the home village of Mr. David Kortie, the Carter Center logistics officer who had arranged our paperwork for this trip. The name of the village was Kortie Town. What a small country.

Just wanted to update a few things and make some corrections.

I’ve discovered that Libercell has towers in Grand Kru county, and Libercell offers GPRS data service. Not sure if this means that Libercell offers GPRS in Grand Kru, but it would seem so. This would mean that you potentially have a choice between Cellcom and Libercell for GPRS/EDGE in Grand Kru county.

More and more I’ve noticed that my cell phone tells me that EDGE data service is available when I have my Lonestar SIM card in my phone. So I think it’s safe to say they have EDGE now. Scratch that.

I’ve started using a Lonestar SIM card in my laptop for email checking and stuff, and my laptop reports that I’m only getting GPRS out of Lonestar. Cellcom was working great, but at $60 a month it was more than I needed. I just use it to check and send email when in the field, so Lonestar’s $1 an hour rate is more inline with my usage. It seems to be more unreliable than Cellcom, but if I leave it on for 20 minutes i’ll be able to download a few emails and send a couple. That’s all I need so I’m happy. At least till someone thinks a 3MB attachment is a good idea.

Finally, I wanted to talk about Libtelco (AKA: Liberian Telecom Company, AKA LTC). Back in the day LTC ran the few land lines that Liberia had. Then the war came, the phone lines were looted, and LTC fell into disrepair. Now, it’s been brought back and renamed Libtelco. They’ve build up a modern CDMA network across Monrovia. Why you’d use CDMA in a part of the world that is exclusively GSM is beyond me, but that’s what they did. I think part of it may be that they’re targeting businesses who want PBX, fax, and ISP services, and not individuals who want to talk. They have a list of their services here, and a list of prices here.

Libtelco is also government owned, just like it was back in the day. The latest copy of the Liberian ICT policy has Libtelco playing a major role in the country’s ICT development. They’ll get to do things like be an international peering point, build out networks for universal sevice, and hopefully a local peering point so that the other major ISPs can send data around Monrovia directly, rather than up through a VSAT, over to europe, then back up a VSAT, and back to Monrovia. Recently a feasiblity study was conducted to see if Libtelco installing a fiber optic ring around Monrovia would make sense. The study concluded that it would make sense. If it’s done right, and they get buy in from the other major ISPs, businesses, and the government plays along, such a network could be really cool.