Cape Town - Come to Cape Town, they said. Meet interesting people, they said. Ride your bike with those interesting people, they said.
What they didn’t say is that sometimes, you may get sick. And I did. Sick enough to confine me to my room at the Cullinan Hotel during the Cape Town Cycle Tour week, my favourite time of the year. There has not been much riding this week, my legs are itchy and my head heavy.
I have a friend who doesn’t get cycling. I get him, though, and when he reads this, Adrian will laugh. He will get it.
He thinks I write too much about cycling. I probably do. I get cycling. It gets me. It got Mark Twain.
“Get a bicycle,” he wrote in Taming the Bicycle. “You will not regret it. If you live.” And you will live. You will see and feel and hurt and smile. And you will learn and remember. Cycling is about the trip from A to B and all the good and bad things in between.
The thousands who will ride began to trickle into the Cycle Tour Expo at the Cape Town Stadium on Thursday. The Cycle Tour first-timers, the veterans aiming to break three hours and the rest, like me, who ride this race as the Tour is meant to be.
The growth of the sport since I first rode the “Argus” in 2000 has been extraordinary. Its success has bred success for others.
The Tour of Good Hope is focused on the professionals, those who may one day make it to Europe and the big time. Hot Chillee, a cycling events company, run the superb Cape Rouleur, a five-day race/tour where amateurs are treated like professionals, with road closures and full support. I have ridden it three times. I may finish it one day.
Cervelo, the bike manufacturer, brought in 50 of its new top-end C5 endurance bikes to test during the Rouleur.
Back at the expo, South Africa manufacturers were showing off their wares. Mark Blewett, the owner of SwiftCarbon, the highly rated South African bicycle company, showed me pictures of the new models he is introducing to his range.
His signature bike is the Ultravox, named after the 1980s band he loves so much. Midge Ure, the singer of Ultravox, sent Blewett a mail telling him he was flattered he had named his bike after him.
Swift will be bringing the Ultravox DSQ with disc brakes and the superlight SSL to the market soon. Last year an Ultravox became the first South African bicycle to win a stage on the World Tour.
My favourite week of the year is almost over, Cycle Tour Sunday is almost upon us. Come ride a bike, they said. On Sunday I will do just that and the worries of the world, the silliness of illness, will be a distant memory.
Cape Argus