My Cycling Journey

If there is an activity which comes straight from the Heavens' cleft, it is cycling! God was too kind when he instilled the human race with the idea of a bicycle, better yet the concept of bicycles and cycling have transcendent to impeccable heights from being a mode of commute to being a health and leisure utility. The culture of coffee/smoothie rides or restaurant swing bys, people gathered over food after an activity, which really is the cherry on top of the ride itself, is impeccable! And quite colors the canvas of one's life. 

                          Source : @skyzcycling

Moreover the social landscape around bicycles boasts incredibly unique people of intriguingly cool personalities. I have been a part of the cycling community for four years now, I don't know of a cyclist who is lame or appears depressed or without something about them, there's always a trait, a wit, a look, a thing they do, there's always something intriguing, at least in my experience. There just isn't a physical activity in the world that can top cycling. I've never heard of a coffee soccer match or a smoothie swimming session or an ice-cream tennis/squash game, everybody else is just serious. It's only in cycling that people gather over a graze after and even within the activity, that shows just how much more of a social light bulb it is than just an activity. 

Now imagine a boyfriend or girlfriend whose ex is a cyclist? Now you have a lot of proving in that you are cool too, quite hectic isn't it? Hahaha jokes! But to be serious, moving on from a cyclist partner would be a bit of a stress, it's like moving on from a singer or instrumentalist partner or discovering that your partner's ex played the piano and sang like Antony Hamilton, it's a paradigm shift. Why? Cyclists have incredible social lives solely in that camaraderish cyclists bubble, let alone in their extended social, career and family lives, so they live quite the ultra social lives making them very peculiar tribes of people. No man is an island, and cyclists are the greatest example of that adage. So in a relationship aspect moving on from someone that introduced you to such circles can be tight, cyclists love to bring their girlfriends to events and prize giving as companions and escort drivers, they know it's cute and it's a flex "yh my girlfriend is driving". The general image of being a cyclist is quite intriguing, you could have a poor personality but being a cyclist makes up for it. Everyone wants to know or befriend the guy carrying a guitar, or the girl walking a dog. It's the same thing with bicycles. You can't breakdown on the highway without a van stopping by for a lift. And, the camaraderie has a way of mixing and harmonizing people from different walks of life, who'd have thought a vendor would be mingling with a bank superior? Ykwim?

To be a cyclist however is to have cycling history, few people without cycling history gravitate to or grow an interest in the activity. It doesn't necessarily have to be pro-active history, just a little flame that only needs kindling. For instance everyone has been on a kiddy bike with training wheels or a tricycle and rode down a block with their mom screaming "wait wait wait" and probably got a good beating for once riding beyond the block. If as a kid coming back home dusty, snotty and let alone sored felt criminative because you'd know mom will light up your arse with a flock or a slipper for being a rascal, you have just enough cycling history. But as you know most people grow up and grow out of riding bicycles, which is often the case with returning cyclists and statements like "I used to ride when I was little".

My entire childhood was carried on a bike, I was star struck by bicycles. I was quite an influential kid on my block growing up, my neighborhood has a local private primary school and another government primary school which was a bit further but proximate, and I went to both schools and had friends from both schools and therefore lots of buddies. So when I got a bike every other kid got bought one or released one from the dusty store rooms. Cycling became the thing on my block so much that kids from up the stream rode across to our block for races and stunt games. My house was like the hub, you'd find lots of bikes laid outside and kids playing hide and seek or sometimes we'd be playing video games on my Playstation 1, my guardians used to gripe about my friends. I was the fastest and most competitive kid on our block but there were skilled stunt kids who rode BMXs from up the stream. I had a childhood sweetheart too, she was gorgeous and had a bike too, we used to ride around the neighborhood and later play Mario on their desktop at her house, during holidays her cousin sisters would travel over and I'd teach them how to cycle amongst all other play. We were like between eight and eleven years of age, our childhood was quite fun I don't think kids today have it that way, actually they couldn't top that! I then migrated to South Africa in 2009, and there cycling was no longer a thing so I got into gym. 

I started cycling again in 2017 when I'd returned home. I was nineteen years of age and had started working at a supermarket in Hillside as a till operator, shelf packer and janitor, I bought a second hand squicky risky click-cluck spring bike without brakes and pedals and rode that thing to work everyday. 

That bike felt like jail time, I lost muscular weight and a frame but it sure hardened my foot, it wasn't long before I got fired and so I quickly sold the bike before it rot and rusted in the storeroom. I wasn't going to get the girls on that. Over time, in 2018, I made the decision to sell my phone and buy a brand new FIX, it was a sporty looking 27 inch lower-end iron bike by which I'd go on suburb expeditions. Funny enough I used to have a childhood phobia for slim wheel bikes, I thought they were highly dangerous and you could easily fall let alone crash, I'm sure kids today think that too, but I had a heart for sport and wanted to seem sporty and thought if people ride these I might as well give it a try. 

It was a difficult decision trading my phone for a bike but truthfully I was going through a depression at the time and felt like kak. So being an active kid on social media I found it imperative that I got off the grid, touch some grass and get into some form of health activity. I'd actually read somewhere that constant activity especially in the sun induced endorphins (happy hormones), and that helped alleviate depressive feelings, so I would just go on rides around the suburbs. I used to see serious looking cyclists going the opposite direction along Cecil Avenue around 5PM and just couldn't figure how to fit in, I would turnaround and try to chase them but they were really fast and their strobing lights disappeared over the hills. 

Depression is a real feeling of emptiness trivia and stagnancy, it is a mental illness with ripple effects which weigh down your esteem purpose and willpower, many things can lead to it. It caused me to lose interest in the gym, early morning jogs and rugby, things I actually enjoyed. Most kids fill that void with narcotic substances hard drugs and alcohol, I got into alcohol parties and girls, but I also frequented the church and that helped me abstain and realize they weren't healthy practices for me. So, I found cycling easily accessible and more mobilizing, and so preferable. You see gravitating to cycling over the alternatives I had just shows that the passion for cycling was just imprinted from childhood. I didn't have a cycling buddy nor did I have an ideal bike, heck I didn't even know much about "road bikes" I just saw the thing lined up in the shop with sporty handlebars and I just knew I was going to enjoy the activity. I remember telling my homeboy that I wanted to ride to the airport and he asked in a puzzled tone "For what Ricky??" and suddenly it didn't make sense why I wanted to ride to the airport because as kids we only rode around the block and the furthest we'd go was into the city which is a 7km distance, so the airport seemed far too far we actually didn't know how far it was, and my friends had long stopped cycling and most had moved to other cities and migrated abroad, I was the only guy on my block who still rode bike and I was keen to reach the airport, which I delayed because it didn't make sense yet until after some time a friend from Australia notified that he'd be flying back and landing there with a Dickies vest for me, I rode to meet him and that made quite the sense. From then on I frequented riding to the airport for leisure, and made a friend called Gibson who worked there, his soul rest in peace, that was meaning enough. I even rode at 6PM just to see what it was like at night and returned home at 8PM, it was crazy I didn't have a flashlight but I enjoyed it! 

What then solidified and activated my love for the activity was when I first interacted with an actual cyclist in my neighborhood the following year in February of 2019. It was around 6PM I was just from a ride and saw the chap walking and pushing a visibly sporty bike, he was a student at the local University and rode what I learned was a really cool Merida road bike. I had a chat with him and discovered he was in the sport deep and had a lingo I didn't understand, man what is a cassette BB set sprocket and STis? And what do you mean I need better rims and tyers I recently bought these yellow lines have some respect buddy! All I knew was a cluster a jockey and chain. He was a rather seasoned avid cyclist and had ridden to the airport a couple times I wondered how come I'd never met a single cyclist going that way, I knew we were birds of the same feather and wished I'd known him much sooner. So we exchanged numbers and scheduled for an airport ride the next Sunday. 

We became really good buddies after that ride and rode as early as 5AM to places, I learned quite a lot of things from him I realized I wasn't the town fella I thought I was, I was actually deep in the dark. He introduced me to an app called Strava for recording rides and monitoring your metrics, I wish I cared about the app at the time, I only tried it later after some pestering and never looked back. It was not until he told me he was planning on riding 167KM to Gweru that I realized I was actually playing with a dangerous pyscho. That didn't make sense to me at the time but he did it and I was awed but definitely not challenged. There's absolutely no reason whatsoever to ride that far boet!

Unfortunately our friendship was cut too short he finished his module and traveled back to his home town across the country, but he sure shed some light in the darkness and I realized I needed better mobility. I rode my bike so much without servicing so it got tired, my aluminum rims had cracks and my cluster's keycus split, the bike needed a BB bearing, the bar tape wore out, the saddle squashed, it was no longer fun and I didn't have mechanical patience and the price was damn near buying a new bike so I bought a new one later that year.

It was the same bike but different colors, and by my mechanic's advice I immediately changed the bearings and he hooked me up with better rims and much more durable knob 27 x 26 tyers. The bike became a sexy modification and was as smooth as ass, the wheels were good on gravel and durable enough for the bad roads, I enjoyed it better and felt really cool on it and kept my stride on all into 2020, I loved swinging by Kentucky for Ice-cream and mind you I was getting fitter by each ride but lost a great deal of muscle weight.

In my solo rides I then met a group of cyclists in the city in the early days of the Covid lockdown, they looked rather serious and had seemingly judged me by my bike that I was some wannabe cyclist with lots of questions on how far they rode and how fast they went, they didn't take me seriously and seemed bothered but I managed to get one of the guys' numbers and we'd chat. Truthfully, linking up with those guys was impossible, they didn't have organized group rides like I'd hoped for so fitting in with them was quite a challenge. I kept trying though until I found out that one of the guys was training with his youngster along the airport road the next morning, I joined them that morning and we rode to the airport in what was a decent stride, decent because I was holding them back but hey you can't drop a rookie and leave them in the middle of nowhere. We met my airport buddy Gibson and he took us some cool photos, we returned into the city and I suggested we swing by Foodlovers and grab a graze because I was appreciative of their time you know. It's not cheap winning the hearts of cocky pro-cyclists as a wannabe riding a lower-end bike. 

Covid started in March, by May I was already frustrated with not being financially productive due to the eradication of vendors out of the city. I was one year into selling bananas since March of 2019 but the pandemic had stopped me from selling in the city. So instead of selling from the scorch-cart as I was doing the whole of 2019, I resorted to taking stock and delivering bananas to customers door to door on my bicycle. It was a difficult time I was selling in smaller quantities in a crate as opposed to when I'd load five crates in a cart at one go, and I had to create an online market selling product with convenience in form of deliveries since people were too cautious to go shopping. It was also very risky because I would mount up the crate on my handlebars unstrapped and ride 13km from the wholesaler back to my neighborhood with the load of about 20kgs sitting on the handlebars. People suggested that I install a carrier on the bike but truthfully that wasn't cool, the bike wasn't bought for load transportation in the first place so I preferred carrying the load where it wasn't supposed to be. I suffered a lot of falls and spillage on the road but I was standing on business. 

One morning, in July of 2020, one of my customers had their landlord visiting when I delivered their order. I found them having a chat as I rode in and parked my bike against a driveway tree and carried my crate towards them and the landlord nudged his friend and said "Eh, check this oan's legs ekse. So you the banana guy? Do you ride?". I discovered they were social cyclists and they invited me on one of their early morning rides, which I didn't miss. The guys were jokers and laughers, it was a multi-racial group with whites, indians and lots of colored raps and cycling lingo, I was the only black kid at the time, oh and another one of their friends they called Feliate, they were all well over 30 years of age, mostly 40s 50s, I was riding with babaz ekse. Usually in such mixtures you'd find racial innuendos but it was nothing like that, the energy there was just cool it was the best link I'd had actually, and I wished I knew them much sooner. I got my first helmet from one of the guys in the crew.

At that time we only rode to the airport in the early mornings and sometimes way past it, it wasn't just riding, they called it "training" and so when the day of a big event dawned the following year in 2021, they organized and lended me a smooth 700 Raleigh sport bike. I was riding those for the very first time and had a great time on that thing. 

I remember myself coasting within the group which they call a peloton, and when I glanced back looking over the heads of two team members behind me, another crew was encroaching and co-joining us and suddenly things got real, what I'd thought was a hot pace suddenly got hotter and some bald-headed chap whined from the back about me zigzaging I heard our team captain say "Hold your wheel Ricky" We summed up to 13 guys in that peloton, and it felt like I was in a convertible airplane by the sound of spinning cassettes and the open breeze. We sat on the average speed of 30km/hr and the sound of spinning wheels, gear shiftings and my jukebox which blasted to Calvin Harris within that peloton was as though I was in a mobile Concert-Hall that was sound locked, in fact I could roll dice and land a six that music actually sounded louder within and everyone there was upbeat regardless of the other bald guy being cheeky about my wheeling. It's like wind carried and harmonized with the music to circulate every beat of Calvin Harris' album in that peloton. And, it smelt great in that group! These guys wear cologne so the breeze was not just cooling but also scented. It was amazing but in a sudden the pace was heating up, this was an 80km ride and I found myself lacking back inch by inch halfway through the ride, those guys increased pace to 33km/hr and I wasn't acquainted with that speed, eventually all I could see were red lights flashing like fireflies disappearing in a distance and over the hills. It was my first time holding such a pace over that distance so thr lactic spilled and I got cramps and dropped my pace quite significantly from 30 to 23km/hr at about 65km out, and finished my ride in Sunday speed. I knew after that ride I had to put my game up. Notice the jukebox strapped against the handlebars with Calvin Harris' Thinking About You in good beats, they called me Mr Dj with the tunes.

Unfortunately for me, three days after that ride I got mugged on my way home from work. It was a tragic night I lost my bike and was hospitalized. The crew and my bike mechanic came out for me and organized a replacement bike and I have been riding the bike since 2022. I've received a lot of love from the crew, everyone is a giver there. The rims, the speedometer, the tyers, the gloves, the helmet, the pedals, the saddle, the tube, the cycling jerseys. I have received that love from the kindness of people in the cycling community who just wanted to see me having a good time, which I think is what really got me so invested in cycling and made me belong, although I refused to venture into the extents of professional cycling despite the offered opportunities. I boasted a great potential but I was already engrossed in entrepreneurial pursuits as a salesperson when I got into cycling, I believed in my entrepreneurial success more than I believed in what sport had to offer. Actually, back in High-School the guys in our rugby team that got scholarships and international offers didn't really go far, my rugby buddy is one of them and he excelled! But he's a DJ now. So, truthfully, beyond cycling, I didn't believe in Zim sports, I just loved simply being an active fella. Moreover, I didn't have an athletic pulse, and felt I was too late for cycling. So I preferred to pursue my own things and out of that afford my own bike and apparatus whatsoever and traveling documents without anyone's fingertips on any of it, and for that reason I've remained with my classic steel hand-out bike, which I love very much, hovering very down to earth to this day. I abuse it though now as I use it as a business bike for my Cycle-Courier Services business, but as they say "it's training" right? If you asked me if I have regrets for refusing to pursue professional cycling I'd give you a sorrowful yes! You see I have a noticeable presence on social media, so emerging as a professional cyclist from delivering bananas on a bicycle was going to be a cutting edge story for me and the club that was going to sign me, which means more publicity for the sport. Apart from that, seeing the guys ride high-end sexy minty bikes gives me a sense of remorse, let alone seeing them travel and win races, I would have really enjoyed that you know and suffered the training duly! What's worse? I was offered an amount to buy a racing bike and get into the sport, what did Ricky do? He asked to instead use the amount to buy a motor for his business, which is termed misappropriation of funds, I regret that! I wish I hadn't attempted to divert someone's good will to suit my own interests and I always beat myself for being like that.

The handout bike was just the beginning of yet another cycling craze in 2022. That bike had much better groupsets or in simple terms "settings" as opposed to the one that got stolen. It was lighter and had STi gear shifters, nine speed gears and was smooth as ass! Year 2022, I rode in excitement and met a lot more cyclists, it's like the bike attracted more cyclists you know, not the cycling but the bike because I'd long been on the road without randomly meeting cyclists. 

I would ride in the early hours of the morning with the crew and ride again at sunset with another crew which I discovered were the guys I used to see ride along Cecil Avenue on my first bike back in the years. They had a different route and by mingling with both crews I was opened to many routes, some places you can never be sure of until you ride with people you know. Unfortunately the sunset crew didn't like my jukebox and my EDM mixes so it wasn't long before I stopped riding with them. I remember turning around mid-ride after a nasty exchange about my jukebox. This was news among the morning crew who enjoyed my music, I remember during our morning ride beneath the Douglas hills one of the guys looked back at me and gave me attitude and a stern face saying "Ricky, we don't want your music here, and all of that noise!" and we had a good chuckle on realizing he was imitating what he heard transpired in the other crew, I love those guys! And that's in a nutshell how the jokes came about in that crew. One morning during a ride along the airport road, one guy's nose bled and the other guy alerted him "your nose is bleeding!" You know what he said? "Ya, it's that time of the month again." and we had a good chuckle! The jokes, the stories, is what really made cycling more enjoyable than it already was.

I was however rather more energetic and wanted to test myself more, so I hooked up with a cyclist on social media and rode my first 100km with him. We rode 50km out on R2 and 50KM back. He rode a high-end bike but unfortunately he was a novice cyclist and the weather was gloomy so the ride was rather treacherous for him with the headwinds and the pace I was giving him, he burned out. He was keen on venturing into the sport but I threw him right in the deep end before he could swim and I never saw him another day in my life I think he sold his road bike.

I understood by him why the guys I'd met in the city during the Covid year didn't seem too cordial with me, they were going to bear a cross and they knew and avoided it. Achieving my first 100km record on Strava felt very rewarding and asserting, I remember it was a March Gran Fondo badge I got, afterwhich I was keen to ride the distance to the next city Gweru, which was 167KM away. I realized then that I'd become the same maniac I thought my first cycling buddy was and I had a chuckle realizing how things change. The thing is there was an event approaching in May and everyone was preparing for it, so I was keen on performing to my best ability and trained hard. 

So throughout my cycling I'd met another crew which mostly consisted of mountain bikers and a few road bikers, I proposed the 167KM ride out to them but not to Gweru straight but a ride halfway out and back. The guys liked riding but they hadn't had such a challenge so they liked the idea and all agreed and we set out in the early morning of April 17th of 2022. 

It was a wet and gloomy morning, the mountain bikers' pace was rather dreadful for that distance so myself and two road bikers broke away and I promised we'd keep communicating over the phone. What was supposed to be a group ride became a solo ride for me because the two guys broke away from me too, I was distraught because I thought I was the man of the match you know. I maintained my pace thinking the guys would burnout, only one burned out and turned around at only 20km out and I snarled, when I phoned him he said he'd been out the previous night and had a hangover. The other chap however was just gliding away and showed me smoke until he waited for us 60km out for about an hour, I couldn't believe that guy! I caught up with him and we reached the 80km peg and turned around before the rest could catch-up. The weather suddenly opened up and got warmer, I have to say I enjoyed that ride but I got so hungry on our way back I could feel my stomach crawling and my energy levels depreciating. Truthfully I was getting a little cannibalistic and the guy in front of me was only faster, otherwise he'd be dead meat on the side of the road. We covered quite the distance back before we met the millepede party who had countless punctures along the way, we realized how lucky we were for covering that distance without a pump and a repair kit. They all turned around with us and we then targeted the best part of that ride, which was the roadside caravan graze. I have never looked forward to a meal like I did during that ride, I'd felt I was going through a mutation in the hunger that I suffered that morning, so when we finally landed at the caravan the pap vegetables and meat felt restorative! I was re-energized and ready to conquer the road, and indeed we did. 

Myself and this guy took off playing Mfaz'omnyama on my jukebox and hit the road in a crazy stride, we were rehydrated and the weather was clement. I've loved Mfaz'omnyama's music since then and he hooked me up with his tracks, especially Ebathenjini, I had that track mostly on repeat the whole way until we landed in the city. Since then we became good buddies and trained together most of the time, we even registered for the upcoming event together two days after that ride. The last ten days before the event which was on the first of May, were full blown training with this guy and that other chap that had turned around due to a hangover. The three of us showed great ethic training in the rain and pushing mileage maintaining a good pace, my weight dropped to 62KGs! 

I was in my element and had peaked but sadly on the day of the event I underperformed more dismally than I did the previous year, even with the club bike I'd ridden the previous year, but that is that in the life of a cyclist. 

Every cyclist can agree that the best time to really bask in the rays of the cycling community, is at the prize giving ceremony and gathering. If like myself you're observant, you'll be sated by the sight. Cliques and camp chairs on the lawn, this is where you see the socialization of people around the sport at it's peak, white guys hurdled up around a cooler box chatting and chuckling with Heineken beers in their hands and abruptly singing shosholoza having a laugh of their lives and throwing bum jokes at their friend who's walking to the podium, absolutely hilarious! Then on our side someone cracks a joke during serious announcements and everybody in the crew bursts, I felt I was in a back of class crew it was awesome! If you're interactive at all you will learn new terms to things you've always known as something else, I learned from someone that they had a shattered bottles report in their group, it was a thing that when you drove or walked or rode past bottles you'd report for caution in their group. It's a world with worlds of it's own, which makes it explorable. There is a lot of energy, oomph and esteem from people in that community, if I had associated with it much earlier I'd have successfully achieved a career as a radio personality without the melancholy I'd experienced throughout my depressive years.

Most people's biggest fear with this activity is falling and crashing, which is what makes cycling challenging to get someone into. I have been a great advocate for cycling myself as it has made my life easier and has transformed my health mentally and physically to good shape. I've recommended it to many people trying to get them into the sport, it's not easy but truthfully the falls and crashes are part of the experience, although they come as accidents and accidents rarely happen. I had my biggest crash in July of 2022. My road buddy and I planned for a 100KM within the city, so we rode to the airport and to the Matopos dam, I was riding centuries (a 100KMs) thrice a week with some tough guys during those days, I was in my element.

My next oan had taken it easy and hadn't been training since after riding that big event previously on May 1st, we'd trained heavily prior to that event so he had taken a sabbatical and so when he got back in action he lacked behind most of the ride. I underperformed during that event and decided to make up for it with my personal rides so my metrics were important to maintain, anything above 27km/hr average speed was good, so I dropped him. At about 90km from finishing my ride, a lady swerved from her lane and bummed me. I was on a downslope and moving in a quick pace, so when I blasted into the tarred road I slid, well dragged, on the road for about three meters. I felt the tar searing into my helmet and thought God what would I be without this thing on. I never thought in my life that an ambulance would serenade the streets interrupting traffic in response to an emergency and it would be me, but fortunately there weren't any critical injuries, just some abrasions bug bites and blistered palms, and my bike was fine I pushed it from the hospital to one of my cyclist buddies in the near neighborhood and he drove me home. Accidents are inherent to the sport but they're not very common amongst cyclists. If as a kid I'd known that girls actually ride them slim bikes I feared so much, I wouldn't have had such a prolonged phobia for these bikes. 

I've painted cycling as such a perfect world without flaws but just like any association or organization or community that consists of the human race there will always be a prick, and cycling is not exempt from having very shitty characters. At the end of the day I've learned to pick my battles and that as people we have different things which we find trivial to engage and those we find too sensitive to not engage, you will meet such occasion in the sport you can only trust your gut. I have, and I have absolutely engaged those that required my full attention and demonstration, and ignored those I found trivial. At the end of the day it's important that we acknowledge that we're all people and we fail one another, and not hold that against each other. The only problem is when the other party doesn't feel the same way and cultivate hostilities that sometimes push some people away. However, hostilities and differences aren't very common in the cycling community, it's not something you should be concerned about but something you should brace for.

I love to organize stuff that brings people together and builds a team and I've used that tendency in cycling too, but as you know if something is not your own it's difficult to get some things to workout before you seem to get ahead of yourself especially at a young age. I've realized it's better to go with the flow than to try and introduce and initiate new things to what's already working you know, just ride bike ekse. So I've only ever managed to organize a smoothie ride, which was really cool and tasty! 

Events of that ride and it's media coverage on Instagram really got some people interested in social rides and it tapped into sport spontaneity and broke the barrier there was about our social rides particularly only being about road activity throughout the year with no gathering over some nice treats. I've always been of the opinion that Zimbabwe has little to no recreational outlets for a colorful and esteemed life and so we could only rely on manipulating the little we have to suit or fill up that gap.

In my cycling journey I've also had the utmost respect for and supported people who ride for a good cause such as Charity or anti-drug campaigns and more. I have with friends escorted the Bridge to Bezi cyclists out of Bulawayo just out of respect for their good deeds, these guys rode the distance from Beit Bridge to Zambezi for charity, it's honourable. I've also escorted the cross-border cyclist Meli Ndlovu on two of his rides in seperate but consecutive years one of which I've written about here. 

I've always honored people like that especially in Africa where the bike is very much associated with poverty to the larger population. People like that break barriers and deserve accolades. I've also ridden for a cause for myself and that is my birthday, I rode 160km to Gweru one way in 2022 to celebrate my strength my ability my tenacity my uniqueness my life and what I could achieve. It was a crazy ride because I took off from home at 2AM without a flashlight, determined to land in Gweru by 7AM. Riding through the pitch-black night was truthfully frightening, I discovered mid-ride that there were cattle on the roadside and feared running into one and getting kicked in the middle of nowhere and too far to call for rescue, it was funny but I rode until dawn. The worst experience were the trucks and buses that had their spotlights in high beam, it was blinding and swayed me out of the road before I gained sight. It got clearer 80km out and I spent the last 100km watching the horizon and green landscapes, Shangani is beautiful, and Daisyfield. I landed in Gweru at 8AM and caught a bus back home and rested. I spent that day like I didn't just ride to Gweru, and if I told anyone that day they'd never trust me again with my lies. I like a life like that you know, to get married and spend the afternoon like I didn't just get married this morning. Things don't have to be all ceremonial, let's move on, it's done. I enjoyed that ride and I'd do it again with a better bike.

I've ridden with a lot of people one on one in my cycling journey but truthfully I mostly enjoyed rides with one person. First of all because it's hard to get anyone into cycling let alone a lady, so I was very delighted to hear that she was joining us. Secondly I've never met someone who started something and they were so determined and self motivated to be good at it, so I learned through her what determination was about and it was real because she really struggled with figuring out her cleats I remember at some point when traffic lights opened I had to push her across the intersection until she cleated, that morning we made sure she didn't stop until she got home. She had the courage to fail until she figured it all out and today all the failures don't matter. Thirdly she had stories for days and was a joker, great sense of humor! So all of this stuff made cycling enjoyable, I remember when we were rolling down a hill in open breeze I could hear her faint voice shouting over the winds between us saying "You see Ricky, this is what cycling is about, this is what cycling is about!!" and we had a good chuckle, shame she hadn't gathered the confidence to let go of her handlebars and emphasize her words with her hand raised and a finger pointing down. There's that hill on Matopos Rd towards the rocky resort or whatever that is, she somehow couldn't climb that hill and almost fell down the edge before I caught her, it was so close yet so funny. She showed a lot of strength and I'd seen a guy griping just 40km into a ride, like dude pull yourself together! She wasn't a cross to bear, she was a true gymnast and quite stubborn on the road, so chaperoning was just a word, you could leave her in the middle of nowhere and she'd make her way home, contrary to popular belief. We used to ride to the airport and sometimes past it, sometimes we'd ride to the Matopos Game park. One afternoon in what was supposed to be a short circuit ride before her lunch time was over, I had a puncture mid-ride, which I mended. Before we could go anywhere I had another puncture which I mended, mind you it was wet and drizzling. Before we could go anywhere I had another puncture and another one before I figured that there were wires sticking through the tyer and my tyer had worn out it was actually totalled, but she was patient the whole time. So I gave her my rear light that afternoon and told her "it's best that you ride back to work before you're late" It was sadly an unsuccessful ride and I was going to push home. She said in a soft-spoken voice "by myself through this traffic Ricky?" There was lunch hour traffic and it had totally slipped my mind that she completely didn't feel safe, so I pumped my rear wheel hoping the puncture was slow enough to take us three kilometers before I pumped again but surprisingly my pressure didn't deflate until we got back to her workplace. That was a long afternoon but it was part of the ups and downs in our cycling amongst road rage, tiredness and running tummies. It was enjoyable to witness her grow in the sport.

Lastly, I bought a mbombela. Well, I got it resuscitated from the scrap and built to functionality. I'd seen an old man park it on a cycle-bay next to where I sold bananas in the city in 2021, I looked at the thing and knew I needed it for my banana deliveries, and, because it had a Zinc plate I knew it was going to be a good banner for advertising my banana brand instead of purchasing the expensive teardrop flag which I'd wanted so much, I was hitting two birds with one stone. I initially painted the bike in yellow as a brand color but reverted to a standard black. I did a couple banana deliveries on it but it was not long before I figured I could actually deliver more things and run errands for people, so I started a Courier Services business on that bike in 2022. I always wish I'd thought about the bike much earlier during lockdown, I'm sure I wouldn't have been mugged on that bowser! I carried heavy loads on this bike and cycled beyond it's conventional speed. That bike kept me fit and the money coming before I sent it away to the farm.

And that sums my journey in this lifestyle of cycling. Hoping it helps you navigate and position yourself fearlessly and anyhow if you're new to this vicinity!