Kingdom for a fork

Timor does unpredictable well – in fact, unpredictability is a bit of a habit here. For instance, everyone knows that most public holidays are announced the night before. So it really didn’t surprise me that on Monday morning I went to work in Dili, only to find myself sipping a G&T at the Indonesian border by sundown, surrounded by people clad in lycra.

The reason for my impromptu 112km trip to the border was a fork. Which on Monday morning I understood to be a piece of cutlery. A significant piece of cutlery, but probably not the type of thing I would normally traverse half a country for. But apparently a fork is also a bicycle part, and a crucial one at that.

En route to the border

My intrepid housemate has been training for months for the Tour de Timor, which is basically a 6-day mountain bike race for crazy people, so of course several of the participants also happen to be my friends. However, until Monday afternoon I thought my personal involvement in the Tour would be limited to the Hour of the Donut.

But when I got the message on Monday afternoon that my housemate’s bike had ‘blown up’ it was clear something had to be done. And so that is how I found myself and a friend driving to Batugade, a town next to the Indonesian border, an hour later, with Rosie in the back seat (Rosie being the replacement bike). 

Precious cargo

When we finally arrived, a few stretching breaks and 3 hours later, we were met by an impromptu camp of approximately 350 people. With no lycra or branded merchandise on, I felt a bit out of place. Nevertheless, one person asked me if I was one of the riders (which thrilled me). Five minutes later I was asked if I was part of the cooking team (not so thrilling).

After a G&T, medal presentation for the first day’s winners and a free dinner, we pitched tents and slept. Only to be woken at 4:30am by the keen chatter of Timorese riders, who when I peered my head out of the tent, were already dressed in their racing outfits – approximately 5 hours early. By 5am one had a helmet on and by 6am there were several pedaling round the campsite. The whole vibe was the morning before a road trip to Disneyland, except with adults.

Rosie in good hands

After breakfast and goodbyes, we were on the road back to Dili. The problem with travelling with a fellow hypoglycemic is that you go through a lot of snacks. You also take great joy in doing the ‘dolphin vocal’ section of Folding Chair by Regina Spektor as loud as possible.

One of several stretching stops

But of course no road trip in Timor would be complete without an unscheduled mishap. 

This isn't the mishap - this is just the road

I did almost run over a baby chicken (I blame the irresponsible Rocky-approach-to-road-crossing mother hen) but the real mishap reared its ugly head when we realised we had next to no oil in the car. Woops. My bad. Apparently that’s an important thing to keep track of. I had been more focused on making high-quality mixed CDs for the car rather than keeping an eye on the stuff that keeps it running.

So we pulled over at the next town, which initially appeared only to have oil for motorbikes (hardly anyone in the districts has a car). However eventually after consulting a mechanic friend in Dili on the phone, we managed to find some suitable oil. Like all ‘happenings’ in Timor, it attracted quite a crowd, including the local motorbike mechanic, his four comrades, schoolkids and the Police Commander. While they took an issue with our neineik neineik ‘slowly, slowly’ approach to oil pouring, they shared our jubilation when the car had finally had its full (um… 3 litres later).

'Why is the malae so neineik?'

Back in Dili I checked the Tour results on the internet – Rosie has made it to Oecussi, presumably with fork and other cutlery items in tact.