I try to ride my bike every now and then, although generally not far.  In fact, I think the longest ride I’ve done in the last year was a 20km ride, which in bicycle terms is really not that far.  I like to get my fitness via a number of different sports – a little bit of gym, a little bit of walking, some track work on the track where I include sprints, as well as cycling.  

I have always thought the cycling is a little bit dangerous, especially on some of our roads, and generally try to cycle within estates.  I read a frightening article recently again in the New York Times, which I have on my Kindle for many years, about cycling death statistics.  Apparently, it used to be children who died most often on bicycles, but these days parents are not really letting their children ride bicycles in the streets – probably for good reason – and so their death rate has gone down.  The group that now has the leading death rate from riding bicycles are males aged 45 to 50.  These statistics obviously relate to America, but I would think that they are probably even more true of South Africa where I don’t recall when I last saw a child riding a bicycle in a street, but there are certainly lots of fanatical, generally older men, riding them.  

The biggest problem with a bicycle is pretty much the same problem that a motorbike has.  People do make mistakes and sometimes those mistakes are just small mistakes – a little bump here, a small collision there.  If you are both in cars, everybody walks away, but if one of you is on a motorbike (or motorcycle as some prefer) or a bicycle, then you may not be walking away at all.  I found that a tremendous pity because it has often been one of my favourite ways to see suburbs – for example riding around Houghton and sometimes you feel safer, certainly in some suburbs, riding around them than walking.  For example, I have gone on rides with my brother through Braamfontein and downtown Johannesburg on a weekend and I would certainly not walk on some of the streets that we rode on.