Time marches on and in this case, time is marching on for David Reeve and his team who are working on getting David to Dakar. In the past month, David’s bike that he will be riding in the Dakar has arrived, it has been customs cleared and registered.

Last week, David was in Namibia doing what is called ‘Roadbook’ training together with his ‘riding mate’ for Dakar, Namibian Ingo Waldschmidt.  The main objectives of this training is to learn how to navigate at theDakar. Participants are given different road books in various terrains with a total length of 1800 km. Participants then set out, navigating from the road book.

The point of this training is for participants to learn to read and understand the road book and to ride in different kinds of terrain finding their way only with the road book. What better place to do this than in the dunes of theNamib Desert?  Once the participant returns from a trip, the track from the GPS which they carried are downloaded and plotted onto a map together with the route they should have taken.  This quickly helps riders to find out where they went wrong and to improve their navigation skills.

But all these activities and preparation cost money. By the time this Lowdown hits the shelves, it will be less than three months before David’s departure for Dakar.  And there is still a shortfall on the money needed to send David as Zambia’s Ambassador to Dakar.  So, if you are considering sponsoring Zambia’s first attempt at The Dakar, please do contact David on 0966 519-516 or email him on dereeve@zamtel.zm.

For those sponsors who have already committed and paid their sponsorship, David and his team are very grateful and say a big Thank You. Unfortunately space does not allow us to mention you all by name, but The Lowdown will give more coverage to this in a future edition.

And for those of you who have pledged sponsorship but have not yet paid – shame on you!

Follow David’s progress www.facebook.com/DakarDaveZambia