And as I'm talking to you, it actually reminds me, I have a lot of people coming and saying,

Ron, you know, I'm married with kids and I've got this business. You know, I'd love to do something. What can you recommend? And honestly, I think it's for some people, it's jumping on your bike and going for a three-day weekend. Cycle somewhere you've never cycle. Go and sleep on a hill. Just take a sleeping bag. I go sleep under a bush and a tree.

I'll go sleep on the beach.

Hey, folks, welcome to the adventure sports podcast. I'm your host, Mason Gravely. You might hear it raining outside. It is absolutely pouring. So if you can hear that, my apologies, crazy thunderstorm outside. But today, anyway, to get into today's episode, you know, if cycling Africa wasn't already on my list of adventures I want to do, I would have absolutely put it on here.

So I'm actually going to double up and put it on again.

This is times two something I absolutely want to do after listening to Ron's story.

He's from South Africa and decided as a way to stop selling himself short

and start doing something that he's proud of, something that seems out of his realm of possibility,

honestly, was to bike to every single country on mainland Africa, which is 48 countries in total.

And if you're familiar with how large Africa is, you know this

is no small task. In fact, this was the very first time anyone had ever done this. And it took

over two years to hit all 48 countries cycling a total of 26,000 miles. He didn't finish with

all of Africa. He actually cycled to the UK to the 2015 Rugby World Cup to watch his team, the South African National Rugby Team, play Japan. Unfortunately, they lost. So he bites all that way and his team lost. But he's made a habit of it. So for every World Cup, he cycles across continents to get there. Most recent one was cycling across Europe and Asia

for one of the Rugby World Cups. Now he's doing it backwards. So we're going to have him back on again

just to talk about what it was like to cycle across all of Europe and Asia as well. He's such a

great storyteller and it was an absolute pleasure being able to talk to him. So no ads today,

so we're just going to jump right into it. So here is the interview with Ron.

So, Mason, this is a great thrill for me. So thank you so much and thanks for your patience. Yeah, as you say, I love my country. I live here in South Africa, we do have our challenges. And consistent power is one of them. So thank you for your patience. Oh, no problem at all. So, you know, we want to talk about one of your adventures. adventures, you've done other adventures, but I'd love to talk to you about one of your adventures is when you left on, what, the 30th of June, 2013? So you're coming up on an anniversary of that. Good point. Yeah, yeah, coming up. I mean, what is that? Eight years, eight years, not quite a decade, but still, it's a, it's getting, it's getting there.

You left Cape Town, South Africa. And is that where, by the way, is that where you live right now? No, I actually live in Quasilunatelle, which is another province. So I live about 2,000 kilometers from Cape Town, but I was living there for a few years at the time. Wow. Well, well, I tell you what, before we get into going into that story, tell us about where you grew up.

I usually always ask that version. I actually forgot. But where did you grow up? Where were you

born and what kind of things did you do growing up? Yeah, so Mason, I'm a born and bred South African.

I was born just outside the city of Durban, which is the third biggest city on the east coast of the country, a beautiful

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