This morning just before 6am I went for a ride on my trailbike. Plenty of traffic out and on a 'safe' route. Planning to ride from Somerset West on the R44 past Lord Charles, and then do a 20km return trip before work, just a quick spin. Around 300 or 400m up the road two guys are walking towards me - they've been walking down the road since I've started the climb, I took note, but nothing suspicious about them on first glance. Around 20m from them they go wide and one walks towards the yellow line, one towards the shoulder, meaning that I have to pass between them, since there's plenty of cars on the road, so I can't cut into the road. Small warning lights go on, but I dismiss it as being paranoid. As I ride between them, they both grab me. I almost break away and they become jittery and frantically grabbing at me and my bike. Smallish 20+ year old guy with dreadlocks and a bigger guy, short hair or shaven head probably around 1.8m wearing a dark hoodie (brown or green) with a massive logo on the front. I'm currently riding flats on my trailbike, and so when I pop off at least I'm not connected to the bike. They both grab at the bike and I get a hold of the rear wheel so we enter a tug of war. I realize after a second or two that there's no way these guys are just going to let go and so I do a quick check of their hands, and that's when I spot the saw in the one guy's hand. One of those pointy saws (lekker rusted) with the crooked handle used to do branch trimming. At that stage I decide that it is not worth it, so I let go of the bike and start running away from them. The guy with the saw actually starts chasing me with the saw down the road. I run in front of an oncoming car (the last one of the batch that crossed the green), so I'm pretty desperate. The gentleman stops and forms a barrier between myself and saw guy. But saw guy does not run away, he stands there looking at me. I ask the guy if I can get in his car and then saw guy starts walking away. At this stage I see the other guy is still up the road and now mounted my bike heading towards us (down the hill). I go on instinct and rugby tackle him. Note: I'm not a rugby player and tbh a guy on a bike carrying momentum gives you one helluva shot, but luckily take him down and quite hard on the road, and as he jumps up and tries to run, I get an ankle tap in for good measure. When he goes down again, I am considering a punch when I notice saw guy running towards us. I grab the bike, bars all skew from the fall and run up the road a couple of meters. The guy that I tackled luckily seemed rattled enough to stop the pursuit for the time being. He now joins saw guy a couple of meters down the road, and they just stand there nonchalantly waiting for the car to go before they come after me again. At this stage a bakkie comes up (AH building Supplies), the first vehicle over the new green light, and so I also stop him. After he stops they turn around and walk down the road (in no rush whatsoever). The bakkie gent (Gerrit) is nice enough to pop my bike in the canopy and give me a lift home. Flippen hell, what a morning! So blessed that only my knees are scraped from the tackle.
