Greetings from a new member in...Zambia

[dino*67]

Hi All, Early last year I went on my usual 3-week trip to the UK. I decided to look at e-bikes and test-rode a Riese & Muller Delite Mountain Rohloff and just felt it was right for me.
I live in the bush in the Luangwa Valley, where there's lots of animals, including elephants, lions, hippos, buffalo, etc.. I had the powered speed limit raised from 15.5mph to 25mph...just in case I ever get chased.
I love walking through the bush, but the bike is on another level, and you can go so far and wide rather than walking, which I am now finding slow and boring!
I also bought the bike to search for fossils, as I work with various fossil teams, mostly from American museums and universities, and we find many amazing fossils. The fossil hunts are official, sanctioned by the relevant authority in whatever country I happen to visit with a team. So far we've explored Zambia, Zimbabwe and Mozambique and have made many important discoveries. I have a large offroad vehicle and can clamp my e-bike inside, so it can't fall over, no matter how bumpy the track. I also have a large solar panel to charge the e-bike via an inverter overnight, so that it's always ready to go each day.
I'd be interested in hearing peoples' thoughts on how to stop punctures. I had Tannus Armour fitted from new but have had a few punctures, so I removed the Tannus and am now trying Mr Tuffy liners and Slime-filled inner tubes, which I'll change every 2 years. If problems persist, I'll try Schwalbe Marathon Plus MTB tyres. Has anyone tried these, and how good are they with stopping punctures?
Best wishes, Steve

 

[Chargeride]

I had the powered speed limit raised from 15.5mph to 25mph...just in case I ever get chased

Thats is simply fantastic, all these westerners wanting to get to work quicker and moaning about speed limits, dude needs it to outrun being eaten

 

[indianajo]

Welcome to the site. Interesting profession, archeologist tour guide. I concur on the speed, outrunning a pit bull dog beats spraying it with pepper every time. I dangle sabre spray from the handlebar with a kale or broccoli tie. Always ready. Sometimes dog packs surround me.
Good luck on elephants & buffalo. Saw some last night chasing lions on PBS Nature. That was in Botswanna.
I ride on road but I use knobby tires like Kenda or Giant. If the knobs are taller than 3/32" road junk does not cause flats. I found slime clogs up the valve where I cannot add more air. I quit using it. I find the age of the tube does not matter much. I reuse the cheap grocery store ones up to 5 years. Kinks in tube in inflation can cause a leak after some miles. I air up then deflate then air up again. This does not always work out the kinks. Also, watch the stem. Hard use can make it slide til it is sideways, then wear the rubber on the rim. I debur the hole in the rim with a round file.

 

[Watana Bob]

Welcome Dino! Wow, what an exciting place to ride and on an excellent bike. You might consider setting up tubeless, this should help immensely if you are dealing with thorns.

 

[JGcycle]

Welcome to the forum.

 

[JRA]

You should be as well protected as possible with the tire liners and slimed tubes. Sounds like punctures are inevitable there and the best you can do is to stop them from leaking ASAP. I have had really good luck with going to tubeless to combat punctures but where I live there aren't alot of prickly bits and mostly are due to running low psi and pinching the rim running tubes.

 

[Jeremy McCreary]

Welcome aboard! We hear many different ebike use cases, but I don't recall either fossil hunting or big scary animal evasion. Sound like great uses to me.

Which critter would you least like to have on your tail? Top speed?

 

[Art Deco]

Thats is simply fantastic, all these westerners wanting to get to work quicker and moaning about speed limits, dude needs it to outrun being eaten

Eco, sport, turbo, ...Lion ? That takes bigger balls than I have, and I am considered stupidly brave.

 

[Art Deco]

Welcome aboard! We hear many different ebike use cases, but I don't recall either fossil hunting or big scary animal evasion. Sound like great uses to me.

Which critter would you least like to have on your tail? Top speed?

If I had to choose a "critter to avoid " it would be a government agent and ebikes wouldn't help.

 

[dino*67]

Hi all, Thanks for the welcome.
Human/animal conflict is real here, with several people getting killed by animals every year. Usually it's elephants, lions, hippos or poisonous snakes. My driver was killed when he tried to ride to work whilst drunk. An elephant chased and tusked him several times, though he actually died after he was operated on for torn intestines. So yes, I probably fear elephants the most, and they are fast, up to 25mph...the same as my bike! The bike is almost always in turbo...just in case.
Finding fossils often involves long walks, sometimes over 50kms, necessitating camping a night in the bush, meaning carrying more weight and water, whereas the same journey can be carried out within a day on an e-MTB, without the extra weight. However, that is offset by having to carry 3 metres of chain, so I can padlock my bike to a large tree when I go off exploring on foot. Here in the bush, there are no cordless angle grinders or bolt croppers, just homemade axes to contend with. By the way, fossil-finding is my passion, I don't get paid. (In 2017, on the first day of fieldwork in Zimbabwe, we found about 95% of a dinosaur skeleton that turned out to be Africa's earliest dinosaur! See Mbiresaurus raathi.
I've attached a few photos...the first is of 2 male lions (out of a pride of 4 male lions) crossing the track near my house (7kms to the nearest neighbour), an elephant at the window, nearly losing my Land Rover ex-ambulance on a deep river crossing, a broken bridge, a croc in my pond eating a baboon, how I secure my bike in the back of the Land Rover, using a clamp to hold onto the seat post, sunset on the Luangwa from our 'sundowner spot', and lastly, a herd of elephants in our pond, eating water lilies.

 

[Chargeride]

Ok, to be safe, you need cheetah speed.

 

[PCeBiker]

I had Tannus Armour fitted from new but have had a few punctures, so I removed the Tannus and am now trying Mr Tuffy liners and Slime-filled inner tubes,

I installed Tannus Armour and Flat-out on my first ebike (26x4.0 fat tires) but didn't like how the Tannus inserts squashed down to less than ¼" thick so I added Mr Tuffy liners as well.

4,500 km with no flats.

I'll try Schwalbe Marathon Plus MTB tyres. Has anyone tried these, and how good are they with stopping punctures?

I installed Schwalbe Super Moto-X (27.5x2.80) on next ebike with just Flat-out in the tubes.

3,500 km no flats.
(except one that didn't count because my rim tape slipped and the spoke hole punctured the tube, and I didn't have the Flat-out added yet)

I'm betting on Flat-out being a better sealant than the others.
I've got a bottle of slime that I didn't use because I found out about Flat-out.

My Super Moto-X tires are rated by Schwalbe as 6 out of 7 for protection.
The Schwalbe Marathon Plus MTB tire is rated 7 out of 7

The Nobby Nic tyres that I think you have look to be about 6 out of 7 as well but they are rated differently,..

If I get a flat tire I do the walk of shame or call a tow truck.
If you get a flat tire you might become food.

There are some big snakes here in Southern Ontario but they aren't poisonous and I could probably fight one off before it ate me.

 

[dino*67]

Thanks for the suggestions, I'll look into them. Tannus say you can keep riding with a flat when using Tannus Armour, but you can't.
I like the snake photos.
The most dangerous snake here is the Black Mamba, as they are aggressive and very poisonous. I caught one in my workshop that was about 4.2 metres long. I released it in the bush and it chased me! A few weeks ago I caught one about 2+ metres long. I got hold of it with my snake tongs but my men were too scared to place the lid on a dustbin I tried to put it in, so I was forced to let it go. It climbed high up the tree in the photos but after 2 hours it came down and I followed it as it made its way to a nearby river, and it hasn't returned to where it had been hiding. One Mamba killed our dog at dusk after the dog attacked the snake while we were sitting close by. We also get Spitting Cobras, Boomslang, Puff Adders, Pythons, etc..
I have worked with 2 archaeology professors from 2 different Ontario universities after I found a site full of hand-axes, and they agreed to come here to research it.

 

[Stefan Mikes]

On a lighter note, Dino. How did you derestrict your R&M?

 

[dino*67]

Hi Stefan, I fitted a VOLspeed V4 Tuning chip. I had ordered the bike in the UK, and the order was sent to R&M factory for the bike to be made to my specs. But, the dealer forgot to ask for an unrestricted version, hence I had to 'chip' it myself.

 

[PCeBiker]

Tannus say you can keep riding with a flat when using Tannus Armour, but you can't.

Yeah that's crap.
That's the Only reason I bought them. They cost me $220 CAD.

When my fat bike tire with Tannus inserts goes flat the tire falls off the rim and gets jammed in the frame, so not only can I not ride the ebike, I also have to carry the rear end of ebike because you only get flats in the rear tire on a fat bike.

This could probably out run me if I had to carry half of a 90# ebike.

I like the snake photos.

The snakes let me get 2" from them to take pictures. It took a few minutes and as many pictures as I could take to get a picture of them with their tongues out.

That second snake (the one that smokes.) was in the middle of the gravel road sun tanning when I saw it.

They are and endangered species and I didn't want it to get squashed by a car, so I kicked at it to shoo it away.

I had to kick towards it 3 or 4 times to finally get it to strike at me and move along.
It just slithered away slowly looking back to give me a dirty look.


This is a Garter snake in my backyard.
The smaller snakes are Fast and Furious.

And some local bug pics from my backyard as well.

,.. One Mamba killed our dog at dusk after the dog attacked the snake while we were sitting close by.

Are you allowed to kill a snake if it's a threat to you or your pets?

Could you fill the garbage can with water and drown it?

 

[dino*67]

Hi Stefan, I fitted a VOLspeed V4 Tuning chip. I had ordered the bike in the UK, and the order was sent to R&M factory for the bike to be made to my specs. But, the dealer forgot to ask for an unrestricted version, hence I had to 'chip' it myself.

Yeah that's crap.
That's the Only reason I bought them. They cost me $220 CAD.

When my fat bike tire with Tannus inserts goes flat the tire falls off the rim and gets jammed in the frame, so not only can I not ride the ebike, I also have to carry the rear end of ebike because you only get flats in the rear tire on a fat bike.

This could probably out run me if I had to carry half of a 90# ebike.

View attachment 183438



The snakes let me get 2" from them to take pictures. It took a few minutes and as many pictures as I could take to get a picture of them with their tongues out.


View attachment 183459
View attachment 183457


That second snake (the one that smokes.) was in the middle of the gravel road sun tanning when I saw it.

They are and endangered species and I didn't want it to get squashed by a car, so I kicked at it to shoo it away.

View attachment 183460View attachment 183460

I had to kick towards it 3 or 4 times to finally get it to strike at me and move along.
It just slithered away slowly looking back to give me a dirty look.


This is a Garter snake in my backyard.
The smaller snakes are Fast and Furious.

View attachment 183458

And some local bug pics from my backyard as well.




Are you allowed to kill a snake if it's a threat to you or your pets?

Could you fill the garbage can with water and drown it?

Hi, thanks for all the great photos! Any idea what species the terrapin is? (Being English, we split them up into tortoises, terrapins and turtles, according to where they're found...we don't just call them all 'turtles'.

Yes, you are allowed to kill dangerous snakes, but I always catch and release them instead. There's a local lady who will come and remove snakes for a small fee if you don't want to do it yourself, just so they can be rescued and released in the wild. (The other side of the Luangwa River where I live is South Luangwa National Park, so they can be released there.

Many locals kill all snakes as they don't know what is poisonous and what isn't. Often people get bitten because they're trying to kill the snake. Pythons are protected by law in Zambia.

 

[PCeBiker]

Hi, thanks for all the great photos! Any idea what species the terrapin is?

I've never heard of a terrapin.
I'll look into it.

(Being English, we split them up into tortoises, terrapins and turtles, according to where they're found...

Being Canadian we have Turtles, Tarpaulins, and Tostitos.
We eat Tostitos and Turtles

Turtles and Tarps are found at Canadian Tire, and they might have Tostitos too.

Yes, you are allowed to kill dangerous snakes, but I always catch and release them instead. There's a local lady who will come and remove snakes for a small fee if you don't want to do it yourself, just so they can be rescued and released in the wild. (The other side of the Luangwa River where I live is South Luangwa National Park, so they can be released there.

Cool !!
I like that approach.

I don't kill spiders either.
I think that they get a bad rap, and people always kill them or run away screaming.

The picture of the daddy-long-legs is from my kitchen cupboard in my house.
I try not to disturb him (or her?) when I'm moving plates around.
I found a few babies running around in my sugar bowl. I set them free on the counter top to find a new home in my house.

Many locals kill all snakes as they don't know what is poisonous and what isn't. Often people get bitten because they're trying to kill the snake. Pythons are protected by law in Zambia.

I just let the Garter snakes bite me.
Their fangs are really sharp and you barely feel a thing.
I just squeeze my finger around the bite to push some blood out to help wash out any bacteria or viruses.

The snakes stink though, especially if they s*it on me, so I don't pester them too much any more.
I just get them to strike at the camera to try and record it.

 

[dino*67]

You had me going for a minute...thanks for not eating real ones!

When the rains start...in abut a month or so...we get quite a few scorpions in the house, trying to evade the heavy rain. I was having a shower one evening, I started to dry off with a towel, when I felt the intense pain of a scorpion sting. I threw the towel (and Scorpion down) and called my wife and told her what had happened, and told her to take the towel and release the scorpion alive...which she did. It's generally the small, amber-coloured scorpions that give the worst stings. This is a 'hissing scorpion' that I caught in the house and released. It was about 15+cm long.

We are the only 'animal orphanage' in the area, and look after anything from elephants, hippo, buffalo, warthogs, monkeys, baboons, birds, antelope, etc., etc., and all get released back to the wild.

 

[dino*67]

See www.chipembele.org