It's all about the bike

About ten years ago, I found myself caught up in my own terrible lie.

Like many liars, I did not start out with the intention of lying at all! I was chatting to friends of mine from Johannesburg who were avid cycling enthusiasts, you know, the kind that fly to Cape Town to participate in the Argus Cycle Tour every year and finish in under three hours. They were in their mid-thirties at the time, super-fit and possessing the best equipment and a thorough knowledge of all things bike.

We were casually discussing fitness and I told them I had recently been given a bike. Before I could elaborate, my friend, instantly wild-eyed with enthusiasm, burst into a kind of praise song about bikes, cycling, the benefits of this specific cardio-vascular excersise, how much I was going to love the experience of being out on the open road, some of his favourite routes in Cape Town, nutrition and supplements before, after, during the cycle and basically every exhilarating, exhausting thing you can imagine connected to this obviously superior passtime.

In my (weak) defence, I have to say that I did, infact, try to stop him halfway through his monologue but, as with all people who find their passion and pursue it wholeheartedly, he was unstoppable. When he paused, my nightmare began.

You see, I was talking about a stationary bike. A mild and meek device that is planted indoors, used for a month or two and later, cleverly, doubles up as a clothes horse. You can imagine what a balloon popper this bit of information would have been at that moment.

I was horrified so I did what I always do when I don't have a clue what to say next: I smiled, broadly and beautifully and raised my eyebrows with great feigned joy. Then he asked me a question.

"So, what kind of bike is it?"

There is more than one kind of bike? Are you kidding me? This really complicated things. I had never owned a bicycle of any sort, not even a tricycle! I had no idea! Fortunately, my friend had asked a multiple choice question:

"A racer? A mountain bike? A road bike?"

"A racer!" I replied. Right then I entered the Dark Side.

"Ooooh." He was impressed. I smiled. Again, I nodded and raised my eyebrows.

"What make?"

This one stumped me. To be completely honest, not only did I not own a real bike, or ever had owned a bicycle of any kind. I have actually never ridden a bicycle.

To give some kind of lame explanation, I have old-school Italian parents who had never taught me how to ride a bike for fear that I would actually want to ride the dangerous thing on the street at some point. So, although I had, mercifully, learned to swim as a toddler, I never did get round to learning to ride a bike.

I was in deep trouble.

"What make?"

I am pretty sure my face went red from the neck up. I am sure because it is not the first time I have been caught in a lie and I know my face to get pretty hot when I do. Yikes.

"Hmmm...I don't think the make is specified on the bike."

He was a bit disappointed at my answer, but he did his best to encourage me that we all have to begin somewhere and even if my bike is not a very good racing bike, I was at least making a start in the sport and should be very proud of myself.

I found my gap and ended the awkward conversation with another of my trick questions: "Would you like something to eat or drink?" I was off the hook.

Or so I thought. The conversation went round and round in my head like a very bad pop-song for ages after that. These were good people and I had lied to them, so very brazenly. For a couple of days after the event, I wanted to call up my friend and come clean but, as the days passed, so the deceit seemed less and less significant and eventually faded into the trunk labelled Silly Moments buried in the attic at the back of my head somewhere.

Until now. Listening to conversations about doping, match fixing and corruption of every kind in professional sport makes me cringe. I imagine boys and girls the world over crossing off another hero from their hearts and minds in deep, unspoken disappointment. Even worse are the jaded comments on radio talk shows about how everybody does it, so why not? And, loudest of all, I hear myself, allowing a good friend to believe something about me that I am not.

Yesterday my little girl asked me one of those really sensitive questions that you dread being asked as a parent. After my explanation, which I tried to keep short, age-appropriate and honest, I thanked her for asking the Difficult Question, looked her in the eyes and assured her that she should continue asking me anything she is unsure of because Mamma would always tell her the Truth.

And that is a promise I intend keeping.

African Dreaming

I had a vivid dream many years ago.

I was standing on the shore of a wide, beautiful river in a ravine. The vegetation was a lush jungle of dark green velvet.

I became aware that I was on the Zimbabwean side of the border, looking towards Zambia. Beside me, Someone was telling me that I was on the edge of two great places. I was both impressed by the vast beauty around me and simultaneously overcome by enormous grief. 

The dream had a profound impact on me, although I am still not entirely sure why. Perhaps it had nothing to do with the great countryside before me at all. Perhaps, although I would not have known it then, it was a foreboding of suffering, probably not my own, but the kind of suffering experienced daily by many. Too many. So many that it hurts with a helpless kind of pain that you feel when you look at something so beautiful that it creates a stabbing, unreacheable ache deep inside you.

I experience it most at Christmas, that intense blend of beauty and pain, happiness and sorrow. The joy of family and faithful friends, goodwill and generosity mingled with the inevitable sadness of the lonely, the poor, the rejected, the sick and dying.

Dreams that linger for years are like close friends or wise mentors. They urge you to remember that which you try to hide under the dusty rugs of daily life - early morning traffic, time crunches and deadlines, money making and money spending, balancing mercy and justice and the systematic chaos of work, duty and responsibility. Then, as the year winds down, everything is slower and less frenetic and you remember: I was standing on the edge of paradise, drinking in the beauty of the African landscape, singing a song of sadness and invisible pain. But I wasn't alone. God, my Strength, lead me in the dream and His Strength will lead me out.

I am not dreaming now. I am awake, watching my little girl sleeping soundly and I am wondering, what dreams fill her mind? How will she hear the Call? Will she shrink back or follow His voice?

But for now, dream on, my little African dream.