The Cancer Fighting Journey: How it All Began

A lot of people ask us, “So who’s crazy idea was this anyway?” And to be honest, we’re not quite sure of the answer ourselves. The Cancer Fighting Journey developed slowly over time and wasn’t something we just woke up with one day and decided to do. There were several events in 2009 that formed the seeds of what was to become the most daring and challenging adventure we’ve ever undertaken. The idea to cycle from one city to another had always been in the back of our minds and several opportunities to participate in an organised tour from Johannesburg to Durban had always fallen through. Even though this would have been an achievement, we wanted to do something different; something that not many other people would ever want to attempt.

Then, quite by chance, Jaco stumbled upon a tandem for sale on the website bid-or-buy and mistakenly bought the bike instead of bidding for it! So now we had a tandem and a dream of wanting to do something great. Over Easter time, Jaco and I visited his parents on the farm in Piketburg and took our bicycles with. His parents wanted to do some sailing on their boat in Saldanha which seemed like the perfect opportunity to cycle there and then get a lift back home with them that evening. We so enjoyed covering the 120kms together that one of us suggested we do something similar but for a number of days in a row. I think it was Jaco who dropped Johannesburg into the conversation and I thought December 2009 would be a great time because then we could get leave. We also agreed that we wanted to do it for the benefit of a charity or a person and we left it at that.

We decided to put some feelers out there to see if anyone had cycled from Cape Town to Johannesburg before and what route they had taken. We wanted to avoid the N1 at all costs due to the heavy traffic experienced on that route with all the holiday-makers heading to the coast in December. We posted an article on The Hub website and didn’t expect any replies. But someone did come back to us, saying they had done the journey just before the Argus in 2009 with a whole group of cyclists and had completed it in a relay manner. They even provided us with Google maps of their route, the towns they stayed in and the accommodation details! It was then that we got excited and started investigating it a little further. At this point, Jaco decided that it would be best to attempt the journey on a tandem as he would be stronger than me after spending a whole month racing in Belgium in August 2009.

PAG gave us the perfect opportunity to focus our efforts when each Business Unit / team was encouraged to do some kind of fundraising activity for Lize-Mari Geelhuizen. We had originally wanted to support people with disability but were delighted that we could help the Geelhuizen’s that were part of the PAG family

“And why would you want to cycle up to Johannesburg? Its uphill all the way you know?” was another comment we got. “Well why not?” was our answer. We knew that none of this was going to be easy and we wanted to prove everyone wrong that didn’t believe that we could do it.

And prove them wrong we did! In a spectacular fashion! We survived, our marriage survived and the memories we created will survive in this blog forever!