Everybody Needs an Adventure Friend

If I say the words "adventure friend" does anyone spring to mind? Everyone should have one and, if you don't, I suggest getting out there and finding one. If you do, then you may already know what I'm talking about. These are the people you've shared life experiences with, the kind of stories that make you giggle and shake your head when you catch yourself taking a random trip down memory lane in the queue at the grocery shop. The person whose WhatsApp message, "What ya doin' in July?", invokes a small but very specific sense of anxiety.

I am fortunate enough to have a few of these people in my life. Ever since I left the world of motorsport and traded it in for something safer (hahaaahaahhaa!), that of mountain biking, I have become the proverbial yes-man. No is not a word that features particularly heavily in my vocabulary.

There is a saying: you only begin to cut your teeth when you bite off more than you can chew. I have lived this to a T over the last 19 years. I'm 51 now. I was never a great athlete at school. Competent at the sports that interested me, certainly no star. But, like with almost anything in life, work, sport, sex, dancing, parallel parking, what you lack in talent or genetics can be made up for with genuine, unhinged enthusiasm.

"The best friendships aren't built in comfort. They're built in suffering, and the shared, slightly deranged decision to keep going anyway."

The German, the Carbonara, and the Cape Epic

This story is about one particular adventure friend: Ole.

Ole and I should never have met. The two different worlds we inhabit and the geographical challenges involved make this the kind of story that could only be written for a film. The set of circumstances that led to our initial handshake involved both bad fortune and good fortune in equal measure.

Ole lives in Germany. In 2022, he and his mate Dirk had entered the ABSA Cape Epic, widely regarded as the hardest mountain bike stage race in the world. The bad fortune came to Dirk, who, in a world still reeling from the Covid pandemic, contracted the virus two days before they were supposed to fly to Cape Town. Ole had no option but to look for a short-notice partner.

This was my good fortune.

I had completed the 2019 and 2021 Epic alongside a good mate from school, someone who deserves his own blog post if I'm honest, and as an avid mountain biker had come out of December in decent shape, although still nursing some fractured ribs from a fall in early February. Mountain biking in South Africa is an extremely social sport, and it has afforded me the privilege of a wide group of good friends. It was Greg who phoned me and said, "What are you doing next week? See, there's this German..." One Zoom call with Ole, a quick bike service, a flight to Cape Town, and we were ready to go.

I met Ole on registration day and, despite him being ginger and German, I knew we were going to be a good match. He knew all the right swear words to get through a tough day and, unlike most Germans, he had a wicked sense of humour. Over the following eight days, our sense of humour was the only thing not left in tatters.

Make no mistake, the Epic is brutal. There is not one free kilometre. But we managed to laugh, mostly at ourselves, every single day. Even on our worst day, when Ole had eaten a dodgy carbonara the night before. The results were explosive, and it took every last bit of willpower for him to get back on the bike. I swore I would push him and pull him every last metre but I was not letting him quit. It was a long day. We still managed a warped laugh about it.

I truly believe that this kind of experience is where the best friendships are forged. Forget team-building workshops and shared office kitchens. Put two people in genuine discomfort, strip everything back, and see what's left. What's left, if you're lucky, is someone worth knowing.

"It was Bob Dylan who sang that people who suffer together have stronger connections than people who are most content. Eight days of the Cape Epic will do more for a friendship than eight years of polite company."

The Thing About Adventure Friends

That story doesn't end there. I ended up joining Ole for the Andorra Epic a year later, and he came back to South Africa to race the Tankwa Trek with me. Those trips are probably worth a blog post or two on their own. But the current adventure is about to happen. We are off to Croatia to compete in the 4 Islands Epic.

We'll be posting along the way on the Here Now Adventures Instagram, so come and join us on the journey. Pack light, strap in, and brace for whatever Ole eats the night before.

The point of all of this, beyond the racing and the suffering and the truly questionable dietary choices, is this: an adventure friend changes things. They make you say yes when every sensible voice in your head is saying no. They push you further than you'd go alone. They make the hard days into the stories you tell forever.

Hopefully somewhere in here is a nudge for one of you to go out and find yours.

What's the wurst that can happen? 🇩🇪