Working on my first serious race Send prayers.

["Maryanne Stroud Gabbani" <gabbani@starnet.com.eg>]

If any of you out there knows a good shrink who wants to see the pyramids,
this is the big chance. I know that I'm completely out of my mind to take
this on, but I equally know that if I don't, I can kiss the chance of seeing
endurance go somewhere in Egypt for a long, long time. I basically stepped
into a gap at our 50 km ride, read the "organisers" the riot act for messing
some things up big time in a report, and have found myself as ride manager
for the 100 km ride to take place on May 19. Now I had envisioned a somewhat
more gentle entry into endurance, but I'm having to manage a ride for Sheikh
Maktoum himself and entourage. He's the Minister of Defense for the UAE so
naturally we have his counterparts here crawling out the pipes. The company
hired by the national newspaper who is sponsoring the extravaganza envisions
a tent city at the base of the Red Pyramid at Dahshur (much prettier than
Giza which is actually quite grubby) and 3 days of festivities. I envision
myself a tottering wreck by the 20th of May. (Oh, yeah. My son arrives home
from college in New York the evening of the 18th and my daughter's
junior/senior prom is the evening of the 19th....like I'm going to see them
before the 20th.)
We are making the ride itself as easy as possible on ourselves as
organisers, but we really don't have the infrastructure that a lot of places
do. Like Dahshur and the Club where we've held the qualifiers are the only
access to the desert without going through a zillion antiquities and needing
permits for everything. The extravaganza organisers are going to have a
harder time than they think, but thank heaven that's not my problem. We will
probably have about 65 horse from here who qualified at the 50 km and there
are rumours of up to 100 from outside. GAAAA.
One thing we are doing is making the trail over some of our more hilly and
stone covered desert in the hopes that people will slow down and take it
easy on their horses. Our folk will probably be using jerry-rigged pads
(thick leather under the shoes with silicone to keep the sand out) and are
being warned to take things easy. We are figuring that some of our visitors
will burn themselves out really quick if they ride the way they do in the
Gulf.
Other than lighting candles and saying prayers, if anyone has any words of
wisdom about the Gulf riders and so on, there are some very open ears here.
Who's the patron saint of endurance riders anyway? Maybe the Virgin Mary,
since she went from Bethlehem to Egypt on a donkey?

Maryanne Stroud Gabbani
Cairo, Egypt
gabbani@starnet.com.eg
"The future will be better tomorrow."
US VP Dan Quayle