National Day and Oman

The UAE is all but 37 years old this year…yes, barely older than myself.  Pretty crazy, I know.  Jen and I were all geared up to watch the celebrations of National Day in the UAE.  The girls at my work were telling me stories, all of which I couldn’t wait to see for myself!  Including spray painted cars in UAE colors, Sheikh tint on windows, back firing Land Cruisers and the occasionally car fire from said backfiring…  

According to the papers, the Abu Dhabi National Day fireworks display would be a Guinness World Record show.  While not nearly as cool of a venue as the Palm Jumeriah/Atlantis grand opening fireworks display a week earlier, it did have two simultaneous shows.  The record must have been for shear tons of fireworks used because the show wasn’t all that great, but it was two shows, at once, lasting 45 minutes!  

Knowing that the Corniche Road (the fireworks were on barges on the Corniche) would be a parking lot all night, Jen and I got there early…a little too early.  But that was our plan, we made a picnic of it.  We got a nice piece of grass right on the Corniche.   We had food, no alcohol, but it was nice. 

The spray painted cars were cool, if you are into it that.  Imagine the Rednecks painting their 4x4s in red, white and blue…that’s what it was like, but it was LandCruisers, MBs, BMWs, Land Rovers, etc…  not a ‘74 Chevy ½ ton on 33” Super Swampers…  Meanwhile, everyone is reving theirs cars so the rev-limiter kicks in and then backfires.  This isn’t just a few cars, it’s every other cars, even the Toyota Camrys and motorcycles.  Rumors have it that the Toyota dealerships are backed up for months with cars after National Day because of this.  I didn’t see any cars blow-up from over revving the engines, I wish, that would have made my day.  I was looking forward to seeing that.

The Sheikh tint was actually pretty cool.  Of course, they went over board and put a Sheikh on every window, sometimes the front one, but still was the most tasteful and respectful celebratory action the Emirati took. 

The more disturbing and scary demonstrations were two fold.  One: they would cover their faces with bandanas/scarfs/gutras and hang out the windows of their cars.  After being here for 6 months, I feel bad saying this, but they looked like terrorists doing that.  I know that wasn’t their intention, but still, it was a little unnerving, especially for Jen.  Secondly: less scary, but more annoying was that parents, whiling driving around would allow their small children hang out the sunroofs, even sit on the roof of their cars as the drive down the street!  I’ve read too many articles about children deaths in this country to let that slip by as common practice.  It’s something Rednecks do…all too many similarities between Emirati and Rednecks…I hate to say it.

I took December 2^nd through the 10^th off, but 5 of those days were Holidays.  December 2/3 were National Day holidays and the 7^th to 10^th were holidays for Eid Mubarak.  I spent the first 6 days as a big training week.  Lots of biking, some running and less swimming.  It didn’t turn out as well as planned.  I did a really solid three day block of cycling – 90min team time trial, 3 hour ride next day and the third day was a 6 hour ride with two climbs up Jebel Hafeet.  The day before the TTT was a 90min run with a 20min interval at 10k pace – felt good!  I was the weakest link in the TTT, as we had a domestic pro in our squad and another ex-pro from Canada.  We lost 2^nd place by 30 seconds, which was a least the cumulative time they had to wait for me after I fell of the back.  It was a great experience, I worked the hardest I have ever in a race.  Climbing up Jebel Hafeet after 3.5 hours of riding wasn’t easy either, but was fun.  I love descending that mountain.  There’s nothing like passing cars on straight-aways and through turns.  I’m pretty close to getting that mountain dialed, can’t wait.  Only breaking a few times is just around the corner, hitting corners at over 60kph…freakin’ rad! 

I spent the next three days in Oman before I went back to work.  Jen, Kara and I drove up north through Sharjah, Umm Sequim, and Ras Al Kamaih into Mussandam Peninsula to the town of Khasab, Oman.  Our goal, two nights of camping and a dhow cruise. 

I have no idea why crossing borders to neighboring Muslim countries is so hard.  We get charged fees to leave the UAE as well as enter Oman.  GCC nationals don’t, but honestly, they make up so little of the tourism to these parts, they should charge them, not us (meaning people on resident visas and true tourists).  It’s not like they need the money…  An hour later we got through and I was truly a grumpy bastard (kinda was that why the whole trip as I woke up in Dubai the morning we were leaving without my passport and had to drive 300kms to Abu Dhabi and 

back before we left on the 180km drive to Khasab) but we made it the public beach.   Found a spot and set up camp.  Wasn’t super quiet, but it was ok.  We positioned our cars to block the cruising cars headlights as they went through camp.  We had one visitor, and Omani running a dhow cruise business.  He was very friendly and had a cool camouflage gutra.  We decided to take a dhow cruise “after tomorrow,” full day.  He was giving a 25% discount off his normal 200 dirham fee, which still isn’t much.    

Damn, a lot went on in this trip.  The next day we were meeting Rebecca, Asha, Tracy and Dave to show them to camp in the afternoon.  We planned on staying at the only fjord you can drive to in the area, but after getting there in the morning and getting swarmed by flies, ants and the occasional Oriental Hornet (see Hatta Pool post) we decided to find somewhere else.  There was an Acacia forest a few clicks away so we ventured off to check that out.  It was okay, but not great…even more goats there.  Screw it, we were off to venture up the tallest point in the region, driving! 

I was driving, and loving it.  The roads were all packed gravel and dusty, but as we got higher in the mountains, it got rocky and steep.  Awesome!  We followed the “Off-Road Oman” book directions up the mountain.  It’s always easier on the way up…it’s the way down that you realize that it’s super steep and a bit dodgy.  We got to the point around 1600m that the book said we had to park and walk.  You could actually continue driving, so I did.  It got steeper and rockier.  

Awesome!  Then as we approach the summit, massive boulders block the trail.  Time to walk.  You could see forever.  We were above the clouds.   Off in the near distance are some cabins, part of RAKs mountain resort community.  I think a trip there is in order.  After a 30-point turn of the Prado, we headed down, in Low-Low at some points.  It was a lengthy decent and I didn’t need the brakes heating up too bad.  There is more trails than we took, so a return trip and further exploring will be necessary soon.