GatBike
GatBike is a cycling event organized by a Tunisian insurance company called GAT. It’s the second edition that the Nomadic Bike group joined. Last year, the first edition was organized in an archeological site called “Oudhna أوذنة ” located 35 km away from Nomadic Bike.
Like any Roman city, the site of “Oudhna أوذنة” includes an amphitheater, a capitol, thermal baths, cisterns, an aqueduct, and dwellings including luxurious villas. In 2022, most people went by car and brought their bicycles with them but in our case, we decided to ride to the site, participate in the 25 km competition and ride back, a total of 95 km ride. It was a little hard for some of the participants but we enjoyed it and that’s what makes “Nomadic Bike” different from other groups.
In the second edition, the organizers chose to move the event to another site called ” Thuburbo Majus ” located 60 km from Tunis. It used to be a Roman veteran colony founded by Augustus in 27 BC (Augustus also known as Octavian was the first Roman emperor and is considered one of the greatest leaders in human history). The idea is to promote different Tunisian archeological sites in each edition.
In this second edition, Alyssa suggested that we can ride to the site on Saturday, camp there Saturday night, join the 20 km competition on Sunday and then ride back to Tunis the same day. We posted a public event on our FB page “Nomadic Bike” to invite cyclists. On Saturday, we gathered a nice group of cyclists and we rode towards the site leaving from Bardo at around 11 am. It was a little windy but we took it easy and had few stops during our 60 km ride. At one point, we were so hungry. We found a small shop selling “Mlawi ملاوي” (a traditional flatbread made of very fine semolina, water, salt, and oil). A middle-age man and his mother were working together. The mother was the one making the dough and cookingthe Malawi while her son’s job was to preparethe sandwiches. You can choose what you put in your “Mlawi” sandwich. Different ingredients were available like harissa, cheese, tuna, boiled eggs, and salami. Sadly we didn’t find enough “Mlawi” for all of us so I(Selim) helped the old woman to make moredough. We spent around one hour in the village, and we had many discussions with the family.Alyssa practiced Arabic language with the kids. After everyone had eaten, we we started riding again towards “El Fahs” the city where the archeological site is located.
We reached our destination before sunset but we couldn’t access the archeological site. The road toward the site was blocked by security guards preparing for the next day’s event. We cycled a little bit around the nearby area until we found a small forest next to a river where we pitched our tents. Some of us walked to the main road to get dinner for everyone. We didn’t cook because we were hungry and tired and, we thought it would take a long time for the dinner to be ready. While some folks went shopping, our friend Salih made a bonfire. We spent a warm night talking about a few interesting topics before going to bed and resting in our tent to be ready for the next day’s challenging competition. On Sunday we woke up around 6:30 am, packed our stuff and had our breakfast and morning coffee in a nearby coffee shop before joining the event. Arriving at the site, most of our friends were already there, having arrived by car.
There are different racesin the competition:, 20, 30, 40, and 80 km. ost of us chose the 20 km ride to save energy for the ride back to Tunis. The organization was really good and they improved it compared to the previous year.
It was nice to meet our Nomadic Bike friend Nedra who started her own small business “Ned’s Sweets’ ‘ and was invited to sell her baked goods and desserts at the event. Our ride started at 10 am, it was an easy ride. In total 1,200 cyclists joined, all categories combined. At the end of the competition, we were really happy and also surprised when we knew that the Nomadic Bike women cyclists Haifa and Amal placed second and third.. In my pcase(Selim), I was the 4th in my category, “Salih” the 3rd in his category, and “Alyssa” the 11th in the women’s category. After the competition, we had a nice celebration inside the archeological site with the rest of the Nomadic Bike friends and other cyclist groups.
After almost everything finished we decided to ride back to Tunis for another 60 km.
We can’t wait to participate in the 3rd edition in 2024 and we hope that we will have more events like this one where cyclists from all over the country can meet.
