Biking in Guinea

Many of you have heard me talk about my ideal site in Guinea - a small village within biking distance to a town. Here is Bonnie's story about her 45 km bike to Labe:

"First time away from Home. We had to go to Labe for girls conference mtg. I was kinda dreading it, because I'm comfortable here and would much rather stay than either biking or ride bush taxi to Labe. We had no choice but to bike, because there is no car going to Labe the day we had to go. I had to first bike 17km to another village and stay over at Toni's (another volunteer who teaches English), then the next day we left for Lave at 7:00am. There is a mountain b/w her and I, and I have to push the bike up and down at some part, because I am just not Lance Armstrong. We didn't get to Labe until 2:00pm in the afternoon. The distance isn't bad, 45km, but the terrain is a killer. 2 large mountains, water puddles, gravels that seems to glue the tires to the ground, large rocks seems like steps that we must walk to get pass, I finally got a taste of mountain biking. The scenery is beautiful, especially through the yellow wheat (?) field that is waist high, imagine biking through sea of soft flowing wheat of mountains in the distance. We passed through a few small villages, and was fun to greet people along the way. Didn't like it once we got to Labe, all the people, calling us "Portos" (white people in pular), noisy, fumes, oh-la-la, I much prefer my small and friendly village. Stay at Labe wasn't too exciting, exchanged some stories & talked about what we do for girls conference, then we just sat around. The highlight is that I got to talk to my family on the phone and reassured them things are going well at site. We stayed for 2 nights and came back to site on our bikes also. The return trip only takes 5.5 hrs, as the first leg is all downhill. We are hoping we'll get better at it each time we go. What happens to hole in tire you ask? We are equipped w/ patch kit, so it shouldn't be a problem. Although we were lucky not have encountered it in our 1st trip. I was worried about it, but now I qualified to adjust breaks. Perhaps in 2 years, if nothing else I'll be at least good at fixing bike. So I biked almost 130 km in 3 days. Very proud of myself."