On Sunday, 16th February, a group of seven of us set out on a 65km-ish mountain bike (MTB) ride at 06h15. It's a ride that changed the lives of everyone in the group, and even more people on the outside of it.
We left the local bike shop on time, slowly warming up cold muscles. The group consisted of mostly local riders who have known each other for some time, except for a German tourist, Falco, and Paul (pictured second and first from right respectively). Paul had joined the group just two days before. It would be his second ride with a local group, the first being just the day before. Paul and his wife had recently relocated from Johannesburg to Wilderness, and he was just getting back into MTB cycling after their move.
The ride was progressing smoothly, at a sedate pace, with the group in a jovial, relaxed mood, enjoying the outdoors and the light exercise.
Paul made the observation that we were riding the same type of bike and we started chatting, eventually getting onto families and what his wife does for a living. She is doing her Phd in art therapy for dementia patients. It immediately piqued my interest because, as you now know, M has dementia/alzheimers and we spoke of how he would mention it to his wife and I would discuss it with the care facility manager where M is admitted about how it could be a mutually-beneficial relationship.
Once we got to the top of Hologram Hill, a climb of about 6km, we turned left onto Seven Passes Road and shortly after that, right onto the Beervlei Road. The real trail ride was about to begin.
The trail turned from gravel road to single track, winding down a narrow path through wet grass and over slippery rocks. This was why we ride our MTB bikes!! After a kilometre or so, we came out at a clearing and a valley, through which one of the local streams flows, where we stopped off to admire the scenery, have a quick snack for some new energy, and just swap some general chit-chat about the ride. Everything was progressing smoothly.
On the other side of the stream, the long grass forced us to push our bikes about 100m up the hill, but that was over quickly and we soon began riding again. The path wound along contours with the occasional incline or decline giving a bit of a change of pace.
Pretty soon, we came to the end of the trail and turned left onto the Bergplaas Road, which would take us back to Seven Passes Road and from there down the notoriously steep T-Shirt Hill and eventually back to Sedgefield.
Sadly though, Paul never came back with us.
About 200m up the hill, Paul was on his own off the front, about 50m ahead of two others. I was a further 50m behind them. Suddenly, I saw Paul stand up on his pedals and then crash and roll over onto his back. My immediate thought was that he had slipped on a loose rock and come down hard.
When I got to him, the two ahead of me were trying to release Paul's clipped-in shoes from his pedals, but I could see that this was more than merely a fall as Paul wasn't moving. A quick assessment indicated that he may have had a heart attack. We found a pulse and put him into the recovery position, but soon that pulse faded away and we could not detect any breathing.
From that moment on, we sprang together as a team. We were in an area with poor mobile phone reception, so one of us went over the hill to act as a relay for calls and messages, as required. One of us got on the phone to emergency services to request an ambulance. The other four of us began CPR, taking turns between pumping Paul's chest and giving oral breathing. Basic medical training I had had in the NSRI came back to me, and at first I had reservations about breathing direct mouth-to-mouth without the use of a screen, but this was a guy's life we were dealing with, so it was a no-brainer.
"A" was on the phone to EMS and getting very frustrated at their lack of reaction. This was because they wanted to know what Paul's medical aid number was, what his ID number was, and stupid details like that, all which could have been sorted out later. Priority should have been about despatching an ambulance to our location. Eventually he got it through to them that we were in the middle of nowhere and we had none of those details. Paul had even left his phone in his car back at the shop so we didn't have any contacts for him. In the meantime, we were still giving CPR. Once you start, you cannot legally stop, until the person either comes round or is declared dead by a medical attendant/paramedic/doctor.
Falco had contacted his wife, who is a paramedic, and she confirmed that we were doing the correct compression to breathing ratios. She also immediately got into her car and raced to our location to assist, but she would be about 20mins away at least.
Finally, ONE HOUR after we got hold of EMS, the first ambulance appeared over the hill. And not only did we get one ambulance, we got THREE arriving within minutes of each other. The Vodacom 112 Emergency Control Room is fucking useless!!
The paramedics assessed the situation and took over, putting Paul onto oxygen and a heart monitor, but after a couple of minutes took the decision to "make the call". Paul was declared dead on scene.
It was really then that it hit us what had just happened over the last hour or so, and the emotion poured out of us in many different ways. We had all just met this guy and this would be the last time we saw him too.
There were the usual self-recrimination emotions in the group ("did we do enough?", "could we have done more?") but we were assured by both Falco's wife and the paramedics that we had indeed done all we could have. One of the paramedics asked me what I had seen and when I explained it, he said that they call this type of incident a "widow-maker", where nothing is apparently wrong, but the next moment the person is gone.
Some time later, when we confirmed that we were not required on scene anymore, the team decided we would complete the ride back to Sedgefield, about 30km away. The ride was completed in reflection and near-silence, with an air of disbelief hanging over us like a dark cloud.
Falco suggested we stop off at the local brewery and toast Paul's life and bid him our final farewell. That done, we were making our individual ways home and "S", the bike shop owner, stopped to say that he was heading to the airport in George. Paul's wife was in Joburg on business, due back that afternoon, and would no doubt wonder why Paul wasn't there to collect her.
S had retrieved Paul's phone from his car, but was legally not allowed to unlock it even to check for an emergency contact. He didn't know how he was going to get hold of Paul's wife and I said the only way was to answer the phone when she called to find out where Paul was. In the end, that's exactly what happened, while S was still 5mins from the airport. Falco's wife had gone with S to the airport and between them, had to break the devastating news to her. I don't envy them for having had to do that.
This last weekend, I did a solo ride on the same route we took that day, partly to clear my head from things happening around me and gather some thoughts, but also to stop off and pay my respects at the scene. What I found there was very touching. One of our group, I suspect Falco as I cannot find anyone else who might have done it, had erected a simple cross (even though Paul was Jewish) and written "RIP Paul. 16.2.25 Thanks for the ride. From the 6 of us..." and listed our names below one another.
This coming weekend we are doing a memorial ride to the scene. S has had a small plaque made which we will mount, probably on a tree next to the scene. It will probably be our last visit for the purpose of remembering Paul, but every time we go past there in the future we will remember that fateful day, say hello to Paul and hope he is riding a bike wherever he is. He clearly loved riding.
R.I.P. Paul...
Look after yourselves out there, folks...
1 comment:
💔💝
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