The Better Route 

The Better Route

The other day my colleague and I bet on whose preferred route is shorter from Point A to Point B. If I’m right, I win a spinach and cheese pie at my favourite café. If she’s right, I have to buy her a meat pie from Hamburger Hut.

I’m a cyclist. So I’m fairly confident I’ll win. But she is a runner. And a self-proclaimed taxi driver in another life. Which means I have had a few moments of wondering if maybe, just maybe, I’m wrong.

So I decided to try both routes. Mine is a long straight shot up a long incline and down a long incline. It goes by in a blur—grass, sky, cars on my right, the occasional pedestrian walking purposefully, two sets of news paper vendors, three lots of roadside worm sellers, all along a long, unbroken stretch of leg-pumping pavement before me. It’s an energising, focusing, meditative kind of ride, in which I can solve problems, make plans, and think clearly.

Hers is a meandering route, with neither the grunt of a long up hill nor the windswept flying of a long down hill. Twelve turns, including a right turn across several lanes of traffic, three robots. A small stretch of cycle track next to where there is often a roadblock. Several hundred metres alongside a police training camp. The short part past the fkwit president’s house, where his guards invariably shout rudely at me, never goes quickly enough. It goes through a more medium density residential and shopping area, which means I spend a good ten minutes of thicker pedestrian traffic. I pass sweet vendors, newspaper vendors, roasted mealie vendors, basket vendors, street children.

Having tested them both, I was confident that even if hers were shorter, on the enjoyability scale, I’d made the right choice. Yesterday I had a look at a friend’s map book. Sure enough, mine works out to about 4.5 kilometres, while hers is more like 6. So I’m one spinach pie richer. And several cycle rides more peaceful.