Happy New Year

Firstly, a huge Happy New Year to everyone! Hopefully everyone enjoyed some new years parties, the Sheikh here in Dubai cancelled "all" new years celebrations as an act of solidarity to the Palestinian cause. That being said, a lot of places got around that by having loopholes, and I think a lot more private parties were held. That and Abu Dhabi, which is only an hour away must have made a killing off of all the last minute plans from the people of Dubai.
Over the last few days we have crammed in a bunch of sight seeing, and had a few good laughs over Dubai. They seem to want to have the biggest and best of everything in the world:
Burj Tower - World's Tallest Man Made Structure
Dubai Mall - World's Largest Mall
Dubal Mall Aquarium - World's Largest Single Pane of Glass
Dubai Mall - World's Largest Indoor Christmas Tree (its 4 stories tall!)
I'm sure the list goes on...but thats all we saw.
Today marks our last day in Dubai, and the start of our journey to Africa. In 3 hours we catch a plane to Cairo, and from there, the biking starts which is the real point of the trip. We finally finished packing, and how we did it is beyond me. We started out from Canada with 4 checked bags, 2 carry-ons and Andrew's parents carrying tons of our stuff in their bags. We shipped our bikes to Dubai in advance. Now as we depart for Cairo we miraculously have only 2 checked bags and our bikes, plus carry-on. I guess over the course of the past 3 weeks we have become somewhat of packing experts! We have yet to see if the airline deems our bags to be overweight, as we weighed them with a bathroom scale, and they are always off! As it stands right now, our two bags as well as both bike boxes weight between 22.5 and 23.5 kg...the max is 23...so hopefully the airport scale is kind to us!

A few more donors to add to our list!
Heather Shonoski
Pat Griffith & Family
Carol-Ann Beson
Colin McLellan
Asha Padmanabhan

We also want to thank the entire Padmanabhan family here in Dubai for the generous hospitality and kindness. They made the final moments before Africa comfortable, and being away from our families so much easier.

So we are off, we are just going to load everything into the car and head to airport. We're not sure how reliable the internet will be throughout Africa, so this may be the last post for a couple of weeks. We hope everyone is well, and we promise to be safe. Happy New Year to everyone, and remember to enjoy the ride!

Judy & Andrew