Trans-Africa Cyclists Rally for Tour of California PDF Print E-mail
Written by Maria Gaura   
SANTA CRUZ (December 2009) - The Tour of California bike race is an eight-day, 750-mile trek that summits a couple of mountain passes and includes at least one heart-stopping ascent per day. Big whoop. Santa Cruz filmmaker Brain Vernor has ridden a road race that makes Levi Leipheimer’s recent Tour of California victory look like the pony ride at the county fair. And Vernor rode his race lugging a backpack full of camera equipment.
Admittedly, the elite riders in the Tour of California pedal a lot faster than Vernor and the fifty or so other participants in the 7,500 mile Tour D’Afrique, an annual road race that wends from Cairo, Egypt, to Cape Town, South Africa. And yes, the ToC athletes put in thousands of training miles preparing for the main event.
But they don’t sleep on the ground for four months at a stretch, they don’t ride for weeks on unpaved roads, and they almost certainly don’t eat stewed camel meat after a day in the saddle. Vernor has done all of the above, and filmed the experience, creating “Where Are You Go”, a documentary of the 2008 Tour D’Afrique.
While the privations of his trans-Africa trek makes Lance Armstrong’s bike seat look soft, and comfy, Vernor holds no grudge against pro cycling’s celebrity and big-bucks endorsements. Vernor and co-filmmakers Benny and Christian Zenga are huge Tour of California fans, and are screening their film in Santa Cruz on December 17 to benefit the ToC’s Santa Cruz stage.
Vernor, 34, a fourth-generation Santa Cruzan, was lured into his African adventure by the Zenga brothers of Toronto, makers of films and art bikes well-known in the cycling world. The three could have demanded a berth in the race promoter’s sag wagon, but they decided to do this thing the hard way.
“As a film crew (we) intended to ride as much of distance as possible,” Vernor said in an email from Japan, where he is finishing a film about the emerging Japanese cyclocross scene. “We wanted to make a film about the experience on the road as cyclists, and using other means of transport wouldn’t have been in the right spirit.”
The three filmmakers packed numerous cameras into backpacks, “and planned on losing a few to dust and other travel abuses along the way,” Vernor said. “With our best efforts to keep our gear intact, we still ended up with five broken still, Super 8 and video cameras. I guess you can’t be upset about it. Four months of filming everyday would break a camera on any continent.”
An annual event since 2003, the 120-day Tour D’Afrique was designed to be a “formal but very friendly competition,” according to the group’s website. The route is organized into eight sections, and divided into 94 daily stages ranging from 50 to 100 miles apiece. Riders sleep in tents at night, and the meals are nothing fancy.
“Dinner was like camping, but fine,” Vernor said. “There were not always plentiful vegetables for 50 people in a desert, so some meals were basic. I did eat camel meat, and that wasn’t good at all.”
The riders on the 2008 Tour D’Afrique were not all hard-core cyclists. One elderly rider said he wanted to see Africa as it appears from the outside of a Jeep. Another man said he had never really bicycled before, and bought his first bike ever for the race.
About a quarter of the route was unpaved, and large stretches traversed barren, dusty desert. “The physical demands were overwhelming at times,” Vernor said. “(But) I found the separation from known things to be the hardest part of the trip.
“We moved forward an average of 123 KM (77 miles) per day, and never had much chance to become familiar with our surroundings,” he said. “That’s not to say we weren’t quite intimate with our surroundings, but we just couldn’t count on anything staying constant.”
The long days and remote locations meant no internet, email, magazines or television, but the daily competition provided routine and a framework. Stage winners were announced every night, and results were posted online two to three times per week for fans at home.  
Participants could win recognition for their times over the full tour, for times on individual sections, or for winning the daily stages. There were also the coveted EFI awards, for cyclists who cycled “Every F— Inch”of the route, no matter how quickly.
Vernor’s film celebrates contemporary Africa, the common language of bicycles, unplanned encounters, and the exchange of joy. “We wanted to make a film that wasn’t about culture stalking, or human safari, but about an equal exchange of joy,” Vernor said. “You know, just play with people, and be played with, and somehow show that.
“We weren’t making some misdirected but well-intentioned documentary about the plight of Africans,” he said. “They are too hip, too fun, and too good at playing to do something so dry as that.”

A benefit screening of "Where Are You Go" takes place December 17 at the Rio Theater in Santa Cruz.  Doors open at 6 p.m., screening begins at 7 p.m. Tickets are $15 at the Bicycle Trip, $17.50 at santacruztickets.com, and $20 at the door the night of the show. The Bicycle Trip is located at 1001 Soquel Ave. in Santa Cruz, near Whole Foods. The store phone number is 427-2580.  

 
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