Day 12: The Last Leg (thankfully I have two!)

I could hardly sleep last night thinking about the fact that it was our last day - it almost felt like the last stage of the Tour de France where the winner has already been determined and all the cyclists enter the Champs Elysees for one last episode of prancing around and then its all over. Since today's 'stage' of the Cancer Fighting Journey was only 95kms long, we felt like it was already over. So we left Gavin Devereux's family home at 6am and headed out to the R59 to start our slow and easy ride 'home' to Sandton Square.


We arranged to meet up with Alan, one of Linda's family who was a keen cyclist as he wanted to join us on this last symbolic stretch to JHB and it was great to up our numbers to 5. The roads were surprisinly busy for the day before Christmas, but we didn't even take notice as we appreciated the last bits of scenery we'd enjoy on the tandem for a while and even had time to stop at the Wimpy for an hour to enjoy the last milkshake I'd have for a while (I'm on strict instructions not to follow the high protein, high fat diet I've gotten used to while cycling!)


In order to save some time (even though we were very early for our arrival in Sandton) we even had to do a bit of bushwhacking with the bikes to get off the R59 onto an abandoned piece of road which took us past the Rand Water Board onto Kliprivier Drive to enter the south of JHB. By trying to be clever, we ended up with a slow puncture which unluckily for Jaco, he had to change, but luckily for us, we made it to a shopping centre so we could stock up with cokes and muffins! (You always gotta see the positive in a negative!). Back on the road we entered the centre of JHB and decided to take Helghardt on a little tour to show him the tourist attractions since he'd never been to the city before so we ended up crossing the Nelson Mandela Bridge.

We made it in good time to Illovo, just outside of Sandton, where we were meeting Lize-Mari (for the first time I must add!)and her family who were going to cycling into the Nelson Mandela Sandton Square with us on their mountain bikes! I was so looking forward to her experiencing 2kms of what we had done over the last 1800 kilometres. I couldn't but help notice that she was very nervous of riding on the road but Jaco was excellent in helping her not to worry about the traffic. We took up the whole lane for the last few kilometers to the Square but we didn't care about the hooting and irritated motorists (Gee, we really were back in Gauteng!)rushing around doing their last minute shopping.


It was really great to cycling into Sandton Square towards the big bronze statue of Nelson Mandela where about 40 people were waiting to welcome us! Thank you to everyone who made the effort to come and welcome us home - you don't know how much that meant to us! We felt really special, yet overwhelmed with the welcome. It was so lovely seeing all the familiar faces and suddenly our journey almost seemed like a blur, like a distant memory. We were very grateful that we could capture some moments on camera as we were interviewed by a cameraman who will be putting together a Cancer Fighting Journey DVD for us using all our pictures and video footage we took during the trip. We are so excited to see the finished product which will remind us forever about this amazing journey we went on. We were also presented with the hugest bunch of sunflowers I'd ever seen by the Geelhuizen Family as well as a photo collage of some of the photo's from our trip - we were honoured!

I think we'll need a few more days to digest everything that we experienced and learnt on the Cancer Fighting Journey and I'd be happy to share these thoughts with you, but right now, its Christmas Eve and this body needs a good, long rest! Would you believe that we actually cycled from Sandton to Northcliff after lunch this afternoon! Yes, you can call the dedication to the bike! I think we are going to experience some severe withdrawal symptons in the next couple of days but we'll try remedy that with a ride on Boxing Day.

Jaco and I wish you all a very Merry and Blessed Christmas tomorrow and hope that you will be generous, kind and loving to those that you know and those that you don't know, just as we have experienced on our amazing cycle from Cape Town to JHB.

Note from the editor (that's me!):

We have every intention to keep this blogsite going with news about our fundraising, cycling, and of course Lize-Mari's progress when she goes to France in January 2010. So please keep visiting this blogsite and watch for updates!