THE FIRST BIKE I LOVED
WE DRIFTED EFFORTLESSLY, LEAVING JUST CARBON-COMPOUND FOOTPRINTS. THIS WOULD ALWAYS BE THE PLACE WE FIRST BROKE UP, THE PLACE WE FIRST MADE UP. OUR PLACE. THEY SAY LOVE HURTS; BUT THIS WAS NEXT-LEVEL.
II have owned a lot of bikes over the years. A very lot. Road, mountain, geared, single-speed, fancy, not fancy.
My cycling mates probably think they know the bike that really captured my heart, from that storied collection. They would be wrong.
The Raleigh 753 I bought from Don Spence in ’83? The gorgeous iridescentpearl ▲ddy Merckx I was on when I first broke three hours at The Argus (as it was correctly called back then) in the alleged ‘summer’ Tour of 1987?
The red anodised Alan that I first started racing bikes on, after a few years exploring my world on a series of locally-built steel beauties – Lejeune, Diamant, Peugeot… possibly even the Bridgestone MB3 I bought from Bruce Reyneke while pretending to be a soldier in Pretoria in ’87, which would expand my riding horizons beyond repair as the ‘it’ll never catch on’ fad of mountain biking took hold?
Or the sponsored Kona Hei Hei in the UK, all 9.8kg of it, in 1991? I thought I loved that Kona; but then I thought I loved each of the others, too. My current affair involves a Santa Cruz Stigmata that has been my constant companion for nearly four years, at the expense of almost all my other bikes.
Almost.
DARK SECRET For there has always been a dark secret in my ‘dream bike’ shed; one that has manifested in many forms over the years, and has culminated in the lithe, dark beauty I sometimes sit with in the man cave (AKA my garage), and just purr over.
She is Polish, by birth; but her predecessors have been American, German and Newlandsian … you see, growing up riding bikes in the ‘80s – and especially, pretending you could ride them fast – you couldn’t help but be impressed by the recumbents that dominated the Argus.
Lloyd Wright, Wimpie van der Merwe, Hans Degenaar were legendary names, and ridiculous talents on upright machines. But when they climbed into one of these recliners, they flew – and beat the Engelbrechts and Van Heerdens by a country mile.
My first recumbent was a home-built BAT, designed by one of the founding fathers of the Argus Tour, →ohn Stegmann. ▶rom his Newlands home, he fostered an enthusiasm for human-powered machines that sadly, has waned almost to the point of no return.
It had a wheelbase of more than a kilometre (not really, but you certainly couldn’t do a U-turn on a normal road); but laid out and pedalling, the halved frontal area allowed you to build up impressive speed, even without the cocoon-like fairings that made it exponentially faster.
It was a 20kg home-built that I happily rode everywhere, even to school, enjoying effortless cruising and comfort. But we never quite fell in