RIDE ACROSS EGYPT IN RETIREMENT? THAT’S PHARAOH ‘NOUGH

ROCK O’Keefe and his partner Pat Fleming are not kicking back and taking it easy for their retirement.

In fact, the 73-year-old and his 68-year-old partner are just about to leave the Coast to ride motorbikes across Egypt just “for something to do”.

This is despite the fact Ms Fleming has only been riding for a few months and Mr O’Keefe is recovering from an injury he got while training for the trip.

The Cross Egypt Challenge will feature 47 riders and 18 support staff who will ride across Egypt in an initiative of the Rotary Club of Alexandria Cosmopolitan.

“We will be riding almost 3000km so that should be interesting,” said Mr O’Keefe.

“You’ve got to do something interesting in retirement.

“Pat always wanted to ride across Africa and then we saw this Egypt ride and thought, why not?”

Mr O’Keefe, who has been riding “for many years”, was recently injured on a practice run when he failed to take a corner on his Yamaha 900. He now has a steel plate in his leg.

“I get the moon boot off just before we leave so it will be fine,” he said.

Riders will be on their bikes for about 7.5 hours a day on the 10-day trip, which begins on October 11 in Alexandria and ends at the Great Pyramids of Giza.

“The roads aren’t great. There is a lot of sand and we don’t want to hit a camel,” Mr O”Keefe said. “It will be a buzz. There are riders from all over the world including Taiwan, Egypt, Austria, Australia – it will have quite an international flavour.”