Just Keep Pedalling

Lists are like Marmite. You either love them or hate them. I’m definitely of the former persuasion. Like studying a good map, imagining how a ride will pan out and the gear I’ll need to endure it is a big part of what gets me fired up for an adventure. If that’s you, then scroll to the bottom for all the tiny details. If you’d rather stick pins in your eyes, then I’ll spare you the agony. Just consider the picture at the head of this article as the gear summary. Somehow or other, everything managed to squeeze into it’s allotted place on the bike. Of course the real test would be how well it rode, and whether all the new gear worked once out in the Scottish Highlands. Luckily, to help with that part, I have some properly wild country on my own doorstep, in the form of Dartmoor. Always beautiful, but in bad weather, also bleak and forbidding.

It was all nicely planned out. A sneaky holiday week in Cornwall with the family, nothing fancy, just a change of scene for a few days. Some walks, a dip in the sea, a braai (BBQ) or two, a few beers, just simple times. We didn’t bring bikes, but I’d firm plans to catchup on the blog. Plus T had been nagging me for ages to revisit some of the epic rides and publish them properly. Although obviously in T’s case, it was the Munga he really wanted to see expanded into an actual book. In fact we’d been exchanging messages about it not two days back, in amongst our usual everyday banter. To be honest, I was more interested in working on that rubber arm of his with a view to a future Tour Divide attempt. After the usual early resistance, it felt like I was making headway too. Aided by a couple of video clips that included barren, remarkably Karoo-like landscapes, I had a sense that the passion for an adventure was starting to flow through him again.

Then, from nowhere, as we were packing the car a confusing message caught my eye on the Wednesday group – something about having been proud to ride with Mr T. It didn’t connect at first, why would someone make a comment like that? And then Penny sent me a private message soon after with the awful reality. Theunis had died. Out doing what he loved, riding with friends, they’d stopped for coffee at 96 Winery Road, and he’d begun to feel unwell. I’m not clear on the exact details, but I believe he collapsed soon after. Despite the best efforts of all present (one of them a first responder himself), by the time the ambulance arrived it was too late. A wonderful guy, and the best friend and cycling partner that any of us who knew him could ever wish for was gone, too soon.

There’s doubt as to whether the expression “May you live in interesting times” is actually an ancient Chinese proverb, or a more recent, and possibly accidental mis-translation. Either way, it’s hard to imagine a more apt phrase to sum up the unusual times we find ourselves living through. As cyclists, it’s certainly been a challenging time, with many of our favourite events and races cancelled. And, depending on exactly where you live, also affecting how often and how far you can ride. In the early lockdown stages, here in England, we were allowed out just once a day, with an emphasis (although not an actual hard rule) that those rides should be close to home. Other parts of the UK and Europe were far stricter – limiting distances to as little as 2km from home in some cases. My riding buddies back in South Africa had it even tougher – for many weeks they weren’t allowed to ride at all. And when that restriction was lifted, riding was only allowed within a 5km radius from home between the hours of 6am and 9am.

As mentioned in Part 1 of this entry (which seems, and is in fact, months back now), our family’s relocation to the UK went surprisingly smoothly and pretty much according to our plan. So much so, that after a couple of days unpacking our new home was looking, well, homely. It’s not that there weren’t still a ton of jobs left to do, but they were mostly small, the sort of jobs that take longer in trips to the shed for tools than to actually do. I knew I’d get to them eventually, if not actually before Yoli got frustrated with me ignoring them. But my mind was craving a proper escape. For months we had been planning, decluttering, packing, unpacking, and realising that half the stuff we hadn’t decluttered was now either redundant, or just plain didn’t fit in our suddenly smaller spaces. I needed some alone time and lurking in the garage was the perfect answer in the shape of three of the boxes still to be unpacked. That shape being, of course, long and rectangular, and sort of bike sized.

Several life events have kept me off the bike, and this blog, for large periods of the past few months. Principal of these has been our family’s relocation back to the UK – a move that neither Yoli or I ever really anticipated, but which has happily worked out more smoothly than we could have wished for. As all consuming as that process has been though, it wouldn’t be entirely fair to blame the lack of cycling on that though. After The Munga, and the year of preparation leading up to it, it’s fair to say my enthusiasm to be on the bike ebbed a little. As a result, the occasional rides I did were entirely social. But now, having settled into a new house and new routines, it feels wrong to start blogging about the new rides and routes I’m beginning to explore without catching up on the last couple I took part in before we left South Africa. Quite fittingly, one of those rides was the ride that got the whole cycling bug rolling in the first place.