I had many people I wanted to meet at the Dakar. I planned to take it easy and walk around the bivouac, see the Red Bull show and buy some souvenirs for my family and friends back home.
The size of the bivouac impressed me it was at least kilometres long and our camp was in the far corner. We had to walk a long way to have a shower or eat our meals.
While many teams stayed in campers, had their own food and massage therapist we didn’t even have spare parts. We used tools and spare parts other competitors threw away, we asked KTM for parts even though we didn’t sign up for their assistance programme, Nothing held us back, we got to know a lot of people and they wanted to help us. Asking for help was a bit difficult even though we were barely able to raise enough money to pay the entry fee, we thought all the fancy stuff was unnecessary. A good friend of mine from Holland, Bart Van der Velden, was able to help us out, sometimes he gave us parts that he thought we might need. Thanks very much Bart for so many things. Sometimes our mechanic Enkhzolboo would go to search for parts and would come back empty handed, then Boldbataar would go and point at the part he needed and wait for a response. It was sad and funny at the same time.
Even Bolivia the team had a large group of people to help out. Each rider has spare bikes with identical numbers and stickers on them. I was jealous but I was happy to be a part of this great community of top riders, our bikes were new the first day and we had no excuses.
We found out there were massage therapists available so Boldbataar and I went over to get loosened up. Boldbataar instantly fell asleep on the table and my experience actually made me feel worse, my injured rib became more painful as a result. I feel asleep under our support truck as my tent was way too hot.
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