The Road to Magaliesberg
The cycling Church
Everyone knows the story: Saul, the persecutor, riding toward Damascus full of certainty and rage, is knocked flat by a blinding light, hears the voice of Christ, and rises as Paul, new name, new eyes, new life. A single moment on a dusty road rewrites a man forever.
My own Damascus moment never came in a flash of light. It came in kilometres. And it comes not once but each time I’m on eddy. I believe Saul had his redemption as the journey changed him, it focused attention to the core of his humanity. My dad Mastelek mkhulu said that the core of Christian values was not to pick at the bones while the whole skeleton was untouched and ignored. On that journey, Saul addressed the skeleton and became Peter.
About twelve kilometres in, when the air thins and the tar starts to rise in the Magaliesberg, the world shrinks to three things: the road, my lungs, and the taste of salt on my lips. The legs are beginning to burn, the heart is hammering like it wants to leave my chest, and the sweat pours off my head in rivers. The wind dries it almost as fast as it falls, leaving that sharp, salty taste of it I have come to crave.
That is when the noise stops. The unpaid bills, the arguments, the endless small humiliations of daily life—they simply fall away, shed like the dead skin of a malting African Rock Python. What remains is astonishingly clear, stripped down to bone truth, the skeleton. I know exactly who I am, what matters, and what does not. Redemption, for me, tastes like salt and effort.
I ride an old yellow Eddy Merckx which I bought second-hand from Gary Beneke, the year he won the Argus. Gary had already pushed that frame to glory; I have added nearly thirty years more. The paint is chipped, the bartape has been replaced so many times, but the bike, Eddy, still feels alive under me. He has carried me through marriage, moments of loss, death, the birth of children, triumphs I bragged about and failures I never admitted. He has never once asked me to be better than I am, only to keep cranking. In that, he has been the most reliable saviour I have ever known. The yellow stead has become one of my heirlooms that define me, just like any sacred item revered by the Navajo.
Sometimes, climbing the long hills towards Hekpoort or the Cradle, I pass other cyclists. They nod or lift a hand off the bars in greeting. We do not know each other’s names, politics, sins, or bank balances. Yet in that moment we are closer than family. We are all in Church, sweating our prayers into the tar, finding whatever grace is available to people who refuse to stay still.
That is my road to Damascus, tarmac instead of dust, a yellow Belgian frame instead of a horse, salt instead of blinding light. And every time I ride it, I come back changed, even if only by a millimetre. Over decades, those millimetres add up to a different man.
Paul got his revelation in an instant. I find mine in the Cradle of Humankind under the dancing clouds of the Highveld escarpment.