LYDENBURG – Lydenburg will be the first stop for Rick Budai, a cyclist of Mbombela who is on a quest to raise
R200 000 for PinkDrive, a non-profit cancer organisation. Starting on September 1, Budai will cycle from Mbombela to Table Mountain in Cape Town, a journey of 44 days with six days to rest and he wants cyclists from each town he will be visiting to join him.
To support the Pinkcycle tour all riders can join him at any particular stage at a R250 fee. It is a 38-stage cycle tour and the R250 fee applies to one stage only, which is from one town to the next.
The money raised will go for PinkDrive trucks on the roads, which provides free health-care services and educates women in communities about cancer.
The tour is scheduled ahead of Breast Cancer Awareness month in October. According to Bella Makapela of PinkDrive, the community can make a huge difference if they participate in the tour.
“Budai will be in Lydenburg at 17:30 on September 1 and we would like to encourage local cyclists to join him. He will depart on September 2 and his next stop will be Belfast. Cyclist who paid for the stage from Lydenburg to Belfast will finish their journey there,” she said.
He will cycle approximately 3 500km accompanied by a backup vehicle driven by his best friend, David Lasarow.
Budai started this initiative when his wife Carolyn was diagnosed with stage-three breast cancer in September 2014. That was the turning point in their lives and Budai believes if it was detected sooner it would have made a huge difference.
Fortunately for Budai and his wife they won the fight against cancer.
Today she is a cancer survivor. However, Lasarow lost both his parents to cancer.
The tour will end on October 14.People can also contribute towards this cause by SMS key word PinkCycle to 40158, SMSes cost R20. The stages are available on line at www.pinkdrivecycletour.com.
