Moving mountains: the upside to social cycling

NIA MAGOULIANITI-MCGREGOR

But throw in some helmets, carbon fibre or aluminium on and off-road bikes, Oakley eyewear, a few well-used maps, leg muscles, and an ethos of “no one gets left behind”, and you’re smack bang on another path. The path of social cycling. Even Albert Einstein had a theorem about it. “Life is like riding a bicycle,” he once said. “In order to keep your balance you must keep moving.”

A few Johannesburg-based cycling enthusiasts have turned this theorem on its head. They keep moving to keep their balance.

Like entrepreneur Steven Blend, 62, who’s been cycling for 30 years, and invented the term “serious/social” to describe it, as it’s “a full work-out, and very social”. Part of the Capri Wheelers Club – to which “everyone is welcome but for the moment, we’re 80% Jewish” – Blend says cycling is an integral part of his life.

“We moan when we do ride – we meet very early in the morning – but we moan even more if we don’t. Most of us feel ratty. The day drags.”

He gave up golf for this, and has no regrets. “You feel free and happy, and have a huge sense of satisfaction afterwards.” He particularly loves the camaraderie. “Our club consists of 20-somethings and 70-somethings who’ve become friends. In one family, three generations ride together.”

Don’t ask Blend what they talk about when they’re not huffing and puffing up a hill. “What we discuss on tour, stays on tour!” he laughs.

But he’ll say this, “It’s usually difficult to find such happy, healthy, sociable, like-minded people. We love the scenery, the open-roads, the clear skies, and the coffee breaks most of all.” It doesn’t have to be an expensive sport, he says, though it can be. You can start with an outlay of a few thousand rand. “But the carbon-fibre bikes will set you back about R100 000.

“Us older guys with more time meet four times a week. My wife Zoe doesn’t mind as long as I don’t wake her up at 04:30. Of course, she gets the benefit of a young, healthy husband!”

This is a group, he says, that’s prepared to “schlep our bikes around the world. My wife often quips that if there’s room, I’ll take her too.”

Advocate Gail Blacher, 62, is part of the Sand Rats, an off-road cycling club. “It’s a de-stressor,” she says. “And it brings balance into my life. Cycling can be pure joy, and the next minute, it’s full of sweat and tears. It’s therapeutic and brilliant exercise.”

But, more than that, she says, “A level of trust builds between you. You know that if you fall or hurt yourself, someone will look after you. There is a code that no one gets left behind.”

She joined the Sand Rats 20 years ago. “It’s mostly Jewish, but we’re very inclusive and open. About 95% of the time, I’m the only woman. We’re on a WhatsApp group, so we chat about where to go. It could be in the South in Walkerville or Pretoria. Or we choose a bike park. We go out of town together to the Midlands or Eastern Cape. Last year, a few of us went to Austria, Hungary, and Slovakia.” Last weekend, she and about 10 teammates participated in the Cape Town Cycle Tour.

“It’s not about winning. Just participating. We meet for a social warm-up ride the day before, and a pre-ride dinner. The night after we meet for a meal and war stories.

“I feel like a million dollars when an event is over. I wonder what I would do if I didn’t have cycling, especially as my partner Martin Davies also rides. Would I just hang out in shopping centres?”

Blacher says there’s a lot of bonding, even though you often have to part mid-conversation. “A heavy guy will fly downhill, for example, and take more time going up, so you can sometimes pick up again with them later. You don’t compete against others. There’s no ego. There’s no pats on the back, but they have my back.”

Blacher’s Sand Rats teammate, 52-year-old entrepreneur David Jossel, says that when he started cycling 10 years ago, he was neither fit nor strong.

Other riders “nursed” him. “They rode slowly next to me, and encouraged me for months. Someone always came back for me. Very early on, it felt more than a cycling club, it was being with like-minded friends from totally diverse backgrounds. Little compares to riding on a single track through a wattle forest. There’s that feeling of togetherness. It’s morphed from a group of people cycling to friends cycling.’

Insurance broker Jacob Hirschmann, 72, agrees. “There’s lots of emphasis on looking after each other. You have a responsibility to your teammate.”

In Botswana for a cycle tour a few years ago, Hirschmann cracked his pelvis. “Doctors insisted I return to Johannesburg. My teammate, Colin, said, ‘I’ll take you back.’ I said he was crazy. We’d been waiting for a year for this. He asked what I would do if our roles were reversed. There was nothing to discuss.”

A few days later, Colin called to thank him. “It turns out, the doctor had diagnosed a detached retina. If he’d carried on with the ride, he would have lost sight in that eye.”

As social as cycling is, sometimes it’s intensely private. Like when Hirschmann is out in the bush. “You look up at a sky so full of stars. And sometimes you see buck, tortoises, or rabbits. I am overcome with a sense of peace, wonder, and gratitude.”

For his part, five years ago Chief Executive Mark Kruger, 49, had a brainchild: the Hatzolah Stonehage Fleming Cycle Tour. Besides the charitable work it has given risen to, Kruger has witnessed something else.

“It’s amazing to see a group of men come together as strangers, and leave as a united group. People form long-lasting relationships.

“Each day, I see this camaraderie building, and watch how the strongest riders go back and motivate the slower riders. These people not only ride mountains, they move mountains for each other.”

Still, no one will reveal what they talk about while riding. Hirschmann laughs, “We can’t say anything. There’s an Official Secrets Act.”