Cape Town Cycle Tour 2015

After the horrific fires that took out almost 5 000 hectares of the Cape Peninsula in the build up to the week of the 38th Cape Town Cycle Tour, one's first emotion is to think of yourself and ask questions on where is the plan B, C, D in such a situation with around 35 000 people coming to the Mother City..The answer is that they probably already settled for plan Z.  To make such a huge decision to shorten the route from the normal 110 km to only 47 km is really drastic, but in this situation the only option.  Yes, the areas into Simon's Town weren't damaged, but logistically it would have been impossible.  The call was the perfect one and everyone will talk about this Cycle Tour as something to be remembered.  I think there will be lots of people who would like to enter the "short" Cycle Tour next year!

We as Malmesbury Fietsryklub decided to do the ride in Solidarity.  The word solidarity means unity as a group and that is exactly what we did.  We all started at 08:48 from group 6B as that was the starting time of our last member.  The plan was to try and stick together right through the 47 km.  If someone got lost we stopped and waited.

Everyone embraced the chance of this once in a lifetime experience and also became part of the long Cycle Tour history.  We decided to not bother about what time we do.  Most of us were on our mountain bikes.  For me personally it was quite a daunting experience.  We normally ride more to the front where the participants know how to keep there lines and how to go through the corners.  Here more to the back it is all about the fun and rules don't really apply!

I want to complement each and every one who was involved in the decision making process of this years Cycle Tour as well as every fire fighter who helped to protect our beautiful city.  Words cannot explain how grateful we are...To the club I want to thank them all for the awesome experience to share this special day with u guys.  We will be talking about this for a very long time.  Go and have a look at the video Thom Orchard made of our ride http://youtu.be/Iyy2jBY_d7I.

This weekend is the start of the AfricanX and I will be updating our movements on Twitter @Jaco_Geldenhuys and from Sunday live from the ABSA Cape Epic.

Have a great rest of the week!

JG