New Down Low Glow video set to “Boda Boda Rap” by Fossil Fool and Lawi One
Here’s a cool video compilation of the Down Low Glow shots we’ve posted to Flickr over the last two years.
The music in the video is a track called “Boda Boda Rap” I worked on when I was working in Kisumu, Kenya for Worldbike.org . My partner and friend Ed Lucero had found us a sweet apartment, and he had been there for almost a year when I arrived in March 2006. I was trying to help Ed finish up the marketing and monitoring for the Big Boda Trial Market, for which I had raised the funds. It was hard work selling bikes in Kenya, but Ed and I had great teamwork and lots of fun together.
Anyway at night at the apartment, Ed’s friends would come over. When they met me, I told them I was a rapper and gave them a sample. I told them I was writing a song about the Boda Boda bicycle taxi operators. The next night they came back with Lawi One, and we hit it off immediately. He installed a bootleg copy of Fruity Loops on my laptop and we would make beats until the battery died, then go out cruising in the warm Kisumu night air. He wrote a verse and I wrote three.
On my last night in Kisumu, Thao and I took a cab to his recording studio in a dank basement. It was me, Lawi One, and his friend who wanted to sing backup but who I thought had no rhythm. We laid down the track in about 4 hours. Thao and I left to get on the night bus to Nairobi. A month later Lawi One emailed me the MP3 and it’s the only thing I have of the song. But my other friend Chris Okiri emailed me to say that the local radio station was playing it every so often.
I lost touch with Lawi One last year. I think he moved from Kisumu to Sweden of all places. But I don’t have his email anymore. Maybe someone who knows him will search for his name on the internet, see this and contact me.
Read MoreSpecialized President Mike Sinyard pedals water-purifying Aquaduct trike in Tour of California prologue.
From our Flickr friend MacPaulster’s account:
“Hats off to Mike Sinyard, CEO at Specialized Bicycles, for riding the winning “Innovate or Die” contest entry, Aqueduct, in the charity Prologue of the Tour of California 2008. The pedaling of this rig powers both the drivetrain of the tricycle and the pumps that purify water.
The machine is intended for Third World countries where clean drinking water is challenging to find. The bike can be ridden to the questionable water source, where the tank in the rear is filled. Then, while the bike is ridden back, water is filtered into the reservoir on the front. Additional water can be filtered while the bike is stationary by disconnecting the drive train. www.youtube.com/watch?v=-U-mvfjyiao
New Worldbike prototypebeing born in Kisumu
New Worldbike prototypes sweep Juacali district in Kisumu, Kenya
Ed Lucero’s been ripping it up at the Worldbike workshop in Kisumu. Check out the beautiful curves on the cargo rack section. When bent right, curves are strong, light, and reduce the number of welds. They also reduce the number of poky things sticking out from the side of the bicycles.
This photo is unusual for another reason. The woman in the foreground is one of the only female Juacali workers in Kisumu.
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Utility Bicycle prototype makes it to Worldbike shop in Kisumu
Worldbike.org’s Technical Lead Ed Lucero is back in Kisumu, Kenya, retrieving bicycles for the upcoming “Design for the Other 90%” exhibit at the Smithsonian, and prototyping full-length cargo bikes. Go Ed!
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