The End of My 2012 Riding Season

My 2012 mountain biking season ended on November 7th, 2011. There was no catastrophic injury involved – instead, my wife and I got confirmation that we would be heading to East Africa for 6-9 months.

  The wide open savanah of Amuru, Uganda. Click the photo for a panorama of this scene in a new window.

The town we’re based in is called Amuru – technically it’s a “trading centre” about 5 km from the actual town – which sits on the savanah in the middle of the Northern Uganda about 100km south of the Sudanese border. The area is hot and dry, with rolling hills; completely lacking in what mountain bikers would consider ride-worthy trails. It is, however, poor, vast, sparsely populated, and dotted with small villages linked by decrepit roads and foot-worn singletrack. Which makes mountain bikes of a sort – those uber-durable, canti-shod, steel-framed beauties of yore – the ideal means of personal transportation.

  Possibly the highest concentration of lugged steel frames East of Commercial Drive. To see a video outlining the Bikes Not Bombs project in Amuru, click here.

The project I’m working on will see 400 of these donated bicycles, packed tight as sardines and shipped from Bikes Not Bombs headquarters in Boston, Ma. rebuilt and distributed to a large team of Community Health Workers operating throughout the region. The idea of used bikes as international development/aid is certainly not new – Bikes Not Bombs is often credited with pioneering it 25 years ago in Nicaragua, and every year dozens of containers full of bicycles are shipped by organizations and communities in the West to the developing world – but the model we’re using represents a pretty substantial paradigm shift: the Amuru Health Workers have formed a cooperative association, which will be taking ownership of the bikes and the workshop that builds and repairs them, and eventually responsibility for the ongoing coordination of the project.

  A guy in the village rides this “local (by way of China) bicycle,” featuring the latest in rod brake technology, to pick up his two kids from schools: it’s missing a handful of spokes, has no pedal platforms and one badly bent crank arm, and there’s a crack about 80% of the way through the top tube. But he keeps on rolling it, blissfully ignorant…

Picking up and moving an entire life and family to rural sub-Saharan Africa is not a decision made lightly. While it didn’t factor into discussions with family, friends and co-workers, the fact that signing on to this project meant kissing an entire riding season goodbye was near the top of my personal “con” chart: I rode more and better in 2011 than ever before; and with a dialed go-to ride, a new frame on order and an opportunity to review a bike for NSMB, 2012 was shaping up to be even better.

  There’s some development axiom about a single bike in Africa impacting the life of 5 people. Some local kids taking a spin on my son’s bike.

But the pro’s easily took the day: I’d been looking to take a break from my job; my wife would get a chance to do the fieldwork for a her PhD on maternal health in an area where it could really make a difference; and my four year old son gets to see a bit of the world before he starts kindergarten next fall – not sure exactly what he’ll get up to, but I’m hoping it will be both formative and fun.

  Some health workers travel up to 30 kilometers to attend the monthly team meetings – being able to borrow a bike for the day is a big help.

And as much as I love riding trails at speed for fun, to me this project represents an opportunity to push the humble bicycle forwards in terms of the impact it can have on people’s lives. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that you feel your life is enriched by mountain biking. Bikes have helped me travel, both filled and helped to clear my mind, led to some incredible friendships, put food on my table for years and etched a lot of smile lines into my face. But for the people of Amuru, these bikes have even greater potential; if we’re successful, the 400 pre-loved mountain bikes currently making their way here will both drastically improve and help to save lives for years to come. After all that bikes have given me, this feels like a good opportunity to give back.

  My freshly-built Surly Travelers Check, a couplered cyclocross bike that turns out to be perfect for the local dirt roads and foot-worn singletrack – Aie Muzungu!

And I should mention that it was also an opportunity to buy a new bike! Thanks to the good people at Mighty Riders and a stroke of good luck, I picked up a Surly Travelers Check frame at the last minute and built it during my week of project prep in Boston. It arrived in Uganda none-the-worse-for-wear (and with no extra baggage fees) and has been crushing the local “roads” and singletrack, to startled cries of “Aie Muzungu!” (which I think means “go whiteboy!”), ever since.

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Omar’s making the best of his time away from his suspension bikes. A cross bike is just a rigid 29er with drops, right? Any words for our African outpost? Spill it below…