"ARE YOU READEEEEEE?!

"Get ...

"Set ..."

Oh, we're going, all right. The first biker bolts off the line early, and a stampede follows. The Rwandans shriek as they sprint past a French television crew. "Zis is a crazee bike race!" the host will say to Ritchey later.

Frozen, I look up at the field ahead and the race just, well, explodes. I've seen stuff in races before, but I've never seen a half-dozen bikes fly eight feet into the air, wheels shooting off the back, handlebars bouncing by my head. It's probably dangerous as hell, but everyone is laughing.

When I finally get going, a bike in front of me disintegrates, its rider falling to the ground and opening up a bloody gash on his forehead. (He'll get stitched up by one of the Blackwater medics.) I watch Cusack roar by, feet in the air, being pushed by two kids. Then it happens to me, too. One moment I'm flailing; the next, four Rwandan kids are pushing me and my bike down the road. I feel the seat warping underneath me, and common sense tells me to tell them to slow down, but I just can't. The adrenaline is too intoxicating. I think of one of Ritchey's many Ritcheyisms: "There's a lot of fun on the other side of risk."

Yes, zis is a crazee race. But maybe it's crazy enough to make a difference. None of this makes sense, after all. A country that's endured what Rwanda has is not supposed to turn right around and become a tourist destination. People like Tom Ritchey are not supposed to restart their lives at 50 with a second act that may wind up dwarfing the first one. And as my groin can tell you, wooden bikes are not really supposed to be raced.

"People ask me, ‘Why do you have the wooden-bike race?'" Ritchey says later. "And, really, I just think it's funny."