Charitable giving is hopefully a part of all of our lives, but there are so many places to give. As cyclists, it feels great to give to an organization that makes the world a little bit better through the power of the bicycle. That’s why I’ve always been happy to give to World Bicycle Relief.
In this podcast interview, I chat with Kemi King, a former professional road cyclist and a director of philanthropy for World Bicycle Relief. We chat about the organization and how it’s impacting lives, particularly those of girls and women.
If you’re curious about World Bicycle Relief, I’d urge you to go out to their website and learn more. I can also tell you that I’ve spent time researching the organization and feel comfortable telling you all to donate to them.
Charity Navigator, which rates non profit organizations, give World Bicycle Relief a rating of 84.23 out of 100 which means “give with confidence.” For comparison sake, the American Red Cross has a score of 88, so it’s on par with one of the best known, most respected charitable organizations.
Learn More About World Bicycle Relief
Website: https://worldbicyclerelief.org
Videos:
Here are a few of Kemi’s favorites:
Mobilize Me – https://vimeo.com/182455965
Together We Rise – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjX4oYnxwJI&feature=youtu.be
Palabana – https://vimeo.com/146177524
Model – https://vimeo.com/291933802
Full Transcript
Kristen
Kemi King, thank you so much for being here today. We’re gonna talk a lot about World Bicycle Relief today. But before we jump into that, can you just introduce yourself and tell everybody who Kemi is and what your background in cycling is – how you got into the sport?
Kemi
Yeah, just a little background, I’ve been a longtime donor and supporter of World Bicycle Relief. So that’s where this kind of all kind of tie in and took on the director of philanthropy role for the Western US two and a half years ago. And I’m thrilled to be able to kind of support that mission.
But back to personal life. I had a tough period of my life, and I really personally embraced cycling with in a big way. And it just, it was this positive force in my world. And I just wholeheartedly understand how a bicycle can change everything. I was professional level road cyclist started the DNA women’s cycling team. And I’m excited to see that continue on and moving forward, taking a back step in that and get to you know, kind of do different things in my world, but also a big cheerleader of of that continued team and the continued support of women’s professional cycling. So get to still be a part of everything on every level. And just I’m really excited to be here and chatting with you. So thank you so much for having me.
Kristen
Thank you. So jumping into World Bicycle Relief, for anybody who’s not already familiar with the organization, what is it?
Kemi
So World Bicycle Relief was founded in 2005 by F.K. Day and Leah Missbach Day in response to the Indian tsunami. F.K. Day, for those who recognize this name and aren’t quite putting it all together, he was also the founder of SRAM bicycle components. And he and Leah Missbach Day at that time decided that they needed to kind of do something big. This disaster had happened, and they wanted to really dive in and make an impact somewhere. And they decided, let’s let’s gather bicycles and take bicycles. So as they worked on this and delivered bicycles, Leah Missbach Day was amazing at photography and storytelling, and as the story unfolded as to what they were doing, everyone said, “You realize you have to keep going, there’s, there’s a greater need in, in the world, and what and what and that and what that could look like is, you know, you guys could make that impact, you could make that change and, and we’ve got to do something like this and continue it.” And so they got a lot of pressure from many different sides and, and decided that they needed to look at that and what that looked like and where they could start to make an impact. And they started to explore the world and the universe and see what what might where they may be able to go next. And just to give you kind of an idea where they landed, they looked in Africa, and in Sub Saharan Africa, there’s, there’s no school buses, paved roads, highways out in the rural village villages, these people living in small huts without electricity or running water. The roads to these nearest schools and sources of water and health care and markets are just really, really long and small trails are often just connecting them. And they started looking at this area and doing a lot of research. And according to World Bank, more than 1 billion people live in these rural communities and lack access to reliable roads, and affordable transportation. That’s one out of every eight people in the world. So if you just think about that number, like huge a billion people and that’s still where we stand one in eight people don’t have access to the things that we have access to. And so that really struck, you know, struck them hard of this is where that impact is so they started focusing on countries within Africa. And they decided that, you know, the bicycle obviously would be something that could could change these lives. With these people in these in these communities, only having their feet as their option to kind of travel and get to any of these places, it takes massive amounts of time about how far it would take to you know, have to walk to the market. And we have markets close. But even that, like I don’t want to spend my day walking to the market. So that’s that’s kind of where, where it came about and where they started.
Kristen
Yeah. Just talking about how far you have to walk to get places, my son school just actually did a fundraiser for water for Rwanda. And I guess they’re the average you have to walk is two miles to get to a clean water source. And then you have to walk two miles back. So it’s a four-mile round trip. And we just so we walked around the track for four miles carrying these gallon things of water. And, you know, I think I’m fairly fit, but I was so exhausted, by the end, my hips hurt, and it was horrible. And I was just, you know, one day it’s worth the water is crazy.
Kemi
It is crazy. And that’s like you mentioned the little bit of fatigue. I mean, their daily tasks is a race against the sun, and fatigue, you know, they’re, they’re looking to collect water, go to school, visit a clinic, deliver goods to the market – their entire day is spent on their feet. Yeah. And it’s become, you know, pretty limiting for kids to go to school because they can’t walk the three hours a day that it takes to get to school to be on time to finish their other chores at home and homework and obligations. So that’s what we were finding, especially with students and, and then health care workers. And I’ve got more statistics, we can kind of share later of where we’re helping but yeah.
Kristen
Can you tell us about the bicycles themselves?
Kemi
So the bicycle itself is not your typical bicycle. It is not lightweight, it’s not complex. It’s not for recreation. It was designed specifically to kind of withstand the rugged terrain and harsh climate conditions of the regions that we are working in. It was a result of over 10 years of production, with support from SRAM and other major industry leaders. It’s extremely durable, really easy to maintain. It’s been field-tested, and it is assembled locally, within Zambia, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Malawi, and Colombia, which is where we’re currently working. The rear rack has this massive capacity of over 200 pounds of carrier load, so they can hold those big water jugs they can carry. We’ve seen like massive barbs, steel rods being carried with you know, contraptions that they create to carry these. There’s kids on back, I think I’ve seen photos of like three and four kids on the back of these things. So they’re shuttling other kids back and forth to school with them or, you know, parents are able to, you know, take take kids to school as well. And so yeah, it’s it’s an amazing beast of a bike that serves an incredible purpose.
Kristen
What does the maintenance look like for those bikes? Like we’re talking about these areas that don’t have roads…
Kemi
You’re, you’re right. So those bikes actually are all the same. So they have all the same parts and pieces. And we’ve got a get into this a little bit more. But we’ve got Buffalo bicycle shops that carry these components and parts and pieces. We also have 2600 field mechanics that service these areas and regions that we distribute in and are able to kind of take care of those, those needs there as well. So they’re really easy to manage and service because the parts are so simple. And because we carry all those parts that they’ll they’ll need and they know where to get them. So yeah, yeah. Just kind of a side note of the bicycle. After we implemented our first philanthropic program in Zambia, we had this amazing thing happen and we had development development organizations, other foundations, farmers, individuals, approached us and say, “Where can we buy such a bicycle?” We thought well, okay, now we need to make these available. So with this quick-growing demand, we created Buffalo Bicycles Limited in 2008. And World Bicycle Relief owns 100% shares of this social enterprise. And the profit generated through the entity sells helps us fund our philanthropic, some of our philanthropic programs.
Kristen
Oh, that’s amazing. I didn’t realize that.
Kemi
Yeah, most people don’t. And we’re like, this is such a highlight we need to share. This is such a kind of scalable model of, you know, being able to successfully address this need and reliable affordable transportation.
Kristen
You mentioned that the bikes are being assembled locally and got these local mechanics. Is this also then creating jobs? Are these all paid positions?
Kemi
Yep. So these 2600 mechanics are independent contractors for us. And they go through a pretty rigorous training and program. And then they’re kind of set out to continually care for these needs. We also do have within these program countries, over 50, Buffalo Bicycle shops at the moment. So we’re expanding those growing those so that there’s, there’s always a place for our mechanics to be able to get their, you know, their parts and pieces as well. And then also the individuals.
Kristen
So I’d read that like, a fairly large percentage of the people getting bicycles are girls and women. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Kemi
Yes, we do focus a lot of our majority on distributing to women and girls. We feel like that is where the greatest need is. And we actually have an event and have campaign each year that focuses just on fundraising for women and girls. It’s our Women On Wheels campaign, and our Pedal To Empower event, which is kind of embedded within that campaign. And I’ll share a little bit more at the end about all of that. So we can hopefully get people excited to participate and be a part of that. It’s a great way to kind of share the love. But we really do focus on those women and girls, because they are the ones that kind of can be the changemakers in the communities. They are the ones that are building businesses caring for the sick, attending school, and loving school. They’re able to serve their communities. The bikes allow them to avoid harassment, they are our biggest advocates for girls. And they’re able to kind of break those boundaries and reimagine their futures. They’re the ones we feel change in the world. So that is our primary focus is really focusing on the women or girls and 70% of our bicycles are distributed to women and girls. Yeah, men are very important as well. But we feel like the women really are the ones that are really dedicated and excited to to make those changes.
Kristen
Right. I think that’s very data-backed within international development in general, right that like it’s shown that you raise up women, you raise up the society in general, makes a lot bigger impact.
Kemi
It is it is. So yeah, yeah. A lot of them are the ones doing a lot of the chores and housework and then everything else. So they’ve got so much more on their plate to get done. So those bikes are changing their worlds.
Kristen
How do people get selected to get a bicycle?
Kemi
That’s a great question. So we have a really kind of beautiful approach that starts with an assessment of each community’s needs, and an analysis of potential impact of our programming. And each community contributes to the design of its own program, adapting and adjusting as the needs present themselves. And then our field teams help establish what we call a Bicycle Supervisory Committee. I always stumble along that because it’s such a long like, so I’m going to call a BSC, Bicycle Supervisory Committee, BSC. They manage our bicycle programs at the community level. So these consists of a diverse group of local leaders and members that are elected to reflect each community. And they’re trained to monitor the program while serving as our partner on the ground. So World Bicycle Relief doesn’t simply just hand over the bicycles and walk away. Our program participants are selected based on their role in the community, and the distance that they travel and the impact a bicycle has on their daily tasks and family. Each participant enters into a time bound term contract with this BSC and owns the bicycle once they have achieved some of their specified requirements such as finishing school, providing health or economic services, supporting community development initiatives. And that’s all kind of overseen by the BSC. They also oversee those bicycle mechanics. So for each community we train those mechanics and they service those bicycles, they oversee them as well.
Kristen
How do you choose communities themselves? Like are there certain conditions you’re looking for?
Kemi
And that’s the kind of the assessment of the grant the overall community needs most of it is distance. Like we kind of take those farthest away from major towns or even minor towns or, you know, it’s we start kind of in those those furthest regions and move our way back in and and a lot of assessment goes in with our monitoring and development teams that are overseeing you know what’s happening in the countries and and areas that may have the greatest need.
Kristen
Is there still planned growth for the organization? Is the idea to like to continue to go into more communities? Are you kind of maxed out?
Kemi
It’s World Bicycle Relief, who’s gonna cover the world? Okay. We, um, we just opened Columbia in, within, during COVID. So that was another crazy thing we like, literally opened it the day COVID hit, which was so crazy. And we’ve had some great success, we’ve had some struggles because that has changed our original thoughts on what we would, you know, be doing with some of our distribution, because now it’s, it’s changed to more livelihood needs, you know, our focus now it’s finding food and water, more so than and you know, that point then to get kids to school. Like it really did change a lot of what we what we did.
Kristen
You’re saying COVID itself, the pandemic itself changed people?
Kemi
The pandemic itself. Yeah, especially for Colombia, just like our overall thoughts of, well, everywhere. Kids weren’t going to school. So we weren’t like, we weren’t distributing to schools, it was like, “Oh, crap, now, where can we help, where can we make that impact during this time?” because our original thoughts and now we actually are focusing on these entire mobilized communities where we service, you know, a greater need within that community, so that we touch students, entrepreneurs, you know, health care workers, that all kind of with live within this community. So we’re focusing on that overall community, because a lot of that livelihood need is there as well. So but yeah, we’re expanding, we are looking at Uganda at the moment, and excited to be considering what it may take for there. And there’s a lot of politics and different things showing up behind the scenes to be able to move into these communities and countries. But yeah, definitely looking at expanding elsewhere. Colombia opened some opportunities in South America, we are also working on a new multi-gear drive train, so that we can allow our bikes to be used in more hilly terrain areas. Because at the moment, they’re a single speed. Okay. Yeah. So we are distributing in Columbia within more the flatter regions at the moment, but there’s obviously a need for more of a more of a bike that can handle some hills will take your drive train. Yeah.
Kristen
Cool, very cool. Obviously adds more complexity and maintenance, though.
Kemi
It does. Well, that’s the beauty of this. And we can’t wait to release it because it does have some, it keeps it simple. So it’s kind of an exciting place for us to be in. And of course, we’re honored to have some of the best engineers working from, you know, what we get to take advantage of from surrounding and other industry leaders that partner with us. So it’s exciting to have this engineering team that’s developing something pretty cool.
Kristen
Yeah. There’s so many needs, obviously in the world, and there are so many ways to give and be involved. Why do you personally think that giving to World Bicycle Relief or using the bicycle as a tool of change is important?
Kemi
You know, as we – I look at these, of course, cycling is my passion. So I absolutely love it, anything to do with bikes, I’m all in. And that was something that’s actually how I found World Bicycle Relief. myself years ago, I wanted something. I wanted to contribute bikes in a way that made you know made such an impact. And I feel like this is truly changing lives. We are just kind of a little bit more background on in what we’ve done and where we’ve, where we’ve kind of been. To date, we’ve delivered 645,000 bicycles to students, healthcare workers, and entrepreneurs. And we are on track to aim to surpass a million bicycles by the end of 2025. That million bicycles. With the average household size being 5 then affects 5 million people. And even more as these bikes continue to get passed down. One of my favorite stories is back in the very beginning. Shani, she was one of our original recipients of a bike in Sri Lanka. And she has now passed her bike down to her sister and her sister is now riding the bike. So it like these bikes continued to grow, and especially the Buffalo bike being so sturdy and capable, it will continue to last forever. We kind of did a we had a question a few months ago to our Dave Neiswander our CEO of , “How many bikes are still working? Like how many of our bikes are still in the field? And, you know, we didn’t have a perfect answer. But he’s, uh, you know, honestly, I don’t think there’s that many that aren’t like, I think they are all like, if we were to go back and pull data, and we’ve, we have gone back to trace, you know, several of the very beginning bikes that were no longer tracking within the, you know, the service contracts, they’ve earned their bikes, and they have them, we, we feel like it’s like a, maybe a 5% if that of what’s not being used. So these bikes are still being used for generations. And that, I feel like, this is so tangible, this is something that changes not only that life, but there are five family members, and then their continued, you know, generations to come of, of bicycles that will save, you know, and change so many lives.
Kristen
That’s amazing. That actually makes me feel like, oh, all of our bikes should be more durable as well, right? Like, all of us should be riding bikes the last a long time, and that can be –
Kemi
I was riding my bike yesterday, actually. And I was like, “When will this one retire?” Like when will it be done and no longer you know, capable of performing? So yeah, that was that was what that I had even yesterday was maybe we should be riding the Buffalo bike.
Kristen
Yeah. Should be more environmentally friendly.
Kemi
I would be totally fit. Oh, if I was gonna be climbing on that thing. Yeah, like 55 pounds of love.
Kristen
That’s funny. Yeah. I’m coming back to just set the World Bicycle Relief and how it’s affecting women’s lives. Are there any specific stories that you’ve heard of that are like really moving? Maybe you could share?
Kemi
I’ve got – there are so many. And this is where I might get emotional. So gosh, I even said it. And I’m just emotional. We had, I’ll share one that I that I love. And it was Ruth, during 2020. During COVID, she stepped into a Buffalo Bicycle retail shop in Zambia to buy some spokes, and a hub and a rim. And she sat there and quickly laced her own wheel. And the shop was like, “Wait, hold on, what’s going on here? We need you.” And she was quickly hired as a bicycle assembler for WBR. And she was the first woman in that position. So really exciting to see how things are growing and developing even within you know, our own organization with women and, and continuing. Monica is one of our recipients in Colombia. And she was a recent widow and mother of five. And she had a lot of weight on her shoulders, obviously, and started working with a women’s collective that can manage his, and carrying these heavy tanks of beet sugar. And during COVID, like a lot of roads were closed. And so bikes were the thing that were you know, they were most accessible and easy. She was able to continue to move back and forth with these with these sugar containers. I wish I had a better definition of what these were but she would often kind of rent a donkey or a motorcycle and the bicycle changed her world because all those profits went stayed with her and she didn’t have to invent these additional things. And one of my favorite stories is Iyon she is one of the first Muslim girls in her community to receive and ride a bicycle. And this is I get so emotional because it’s it’s just the same reason why I think you and I probably ride bikes is just the joy and the freedom that we feel and she has this moment where she just she just loves riding the bike and she we have a video that I can share out and I don’t know if you share out little you know links or anything. One of my favorites because she’s just like, “I just love riding my bike.” And I think that’s we all just love riding our bikes and that’s that’s that joy that she gets. Plus it’s saving her so much time and so much energy and the other students around her we’re all So, kind of like, well, this, this girl is like us, she’s, she’s riding her bike, even though the difference of religion and you know, all of that what we’re kind of facing now too, with diversity and changes, they’re facing it as well within these religious differences. And sure, “She’s just like us, and she rides her bike, and she loves to ride her bike!” So there’s so many stories of, you know, the lives that they’re changing, but also just those moments that they’re changing and kind of bringing friendships together too.
Kristen
Yeah, I actually love that. Because that’s not quite as tangible, right? You could easy to talk about getting to school and getting water and running your business and all those things. But a bicycle is also just provides that feeling of empowerment and freedom and enjoyment. And those are important things too.
Kemi
I think so and I think that’s so relatable for us. It’s, you know, I can definitely understand what it feels like to ride my bike. Yes, brings me so knowing that that’s probably bringing that much joy to all those people as well as serving such a need and purpose too.
Kristen
You already mentioned this pedal to empower event that’s coming up, I think June 3rd to 5th. This is in 2022 that we’re talking about this. Can you tell us a little bit about that event and how the ladies listening could get involved?
Kemi
Yes, I’d love to. So four years ago, in 2018, the UN declared June 3rd, as World Bicycle Day. And our annual global ride Pedal to Empower was born to celebrate. So this kicks off, I mentioned kind of our Women on Wheels campaign where we have got a goal to raise $1 million to support why WBR’s mission and programming focused on women and girls. And this June, we’re really excited to have Strava support Pedal to Empower as a presenting sponsor and highlight the event as a global challenge on their platform. So along with Strava, and our own kind of registration, pedaltoempower.com, you can register there, you can join the Strava challenge, which will be live on May 20th. Between those two, we’re trying to accumulate the most miles we can our goal is a million kilometers, which I think we will definitely surpass, and hopefully create this kind of largest cycling movement in the world. And we feel like with Strava support, we also have Zwift’s support, there’ll be doing rides on their platform as well. We feel like this will really kind of bring this opportunity to not only highlight women and girls and how we can empower them. But this collaboration of bringing everybody together in kind of one movement and one moment around something so incredible.
Kristen
Awesome, very cool. Aside from Pedal to Empower, what are other ways that people can give to World Bicycle Relief or get involved?
Kemi
We always take donations. And you can donate at anytime at WorldBicycleRelief.org. We don’t have a lot of opportunity within the US to kind of volunteer or do something. And because a lot of bikes are being distributed in-country, they’re delivered in-country and assembled in-country. I’d love it to say, “Hey, come, come build bikes with me on Tuesday.” You know, that’d be kind of kind of amazing. But the process is so much simpler to be able to just ship them directly and keep it that way, we in fact, don’t have very many bikes within the US. Because of that, it’s actually harder for us to get them. But donations, you can always do. Fundraisers yourself, there’s several donors that go out and do some, you know, amazing challenge of cycling across the US or cycling you know, from point A to point B and fundraise for World Bicycle Relief, we’ve seen some really great support that way. Kind of get creative on any of those things. A lot of corporates and companies get involved with some opportunities within their organizations for matching and for, you know, donations that way or they’ll do kind of impact days within their company. We’ve got some really great support from some organizations doing things that way and you know, any, any connections to corporates pass along our way or connect us if your corporate might have some interest because that’s a great way to kind of get them involved and see where we can kind of collaborate and come up with ideas to share. But yeah, there’s kind of the different ways.
Kristen
And there’s some dollar amount that you can actually give that buys a bike directly, right. And how much that is?
Kemi
165.165 donates a bike, which is pretty amazing. If you kind of think of what this 165 does.
Kristen
Yeah, that’s amazing. Yeah, that actually brings up a good question. Have you had trouble with the pandemic and all the supply chain issues that have ensued is that price, is the pressure on that price, it’s costing to get the bike?
Kemi
We have. We’ve seen an increase in price. And we actually did go through a bit of an increase because of that. There’s it is, luckily, we had quite a few containers on their way or received or so we really didn’t get hit too much by the pandemic and the supply chain. We also have incredible partners, Giant actually manufactures the buffalo bicycle. And Giant really is just committed to continuing to keep our you know, our bicycles in stock. So we do have really great partners that kind of make sure that they give us great allotments still, even during this rough time. The biggest problem we’re seeing right now is supply chain is actually in the development of our multi-gear drive train, that supply chain has put a little bit of a damper on that we’d hope to have that kind of released and out there full steam before now, but it’ll come it just patience like everybody else. Even in the bike industry, we’ve got great patience. So, waiting for our turn. But yeah, it’s, um, it we’ve been fortunate. But there has been some increase, and we’ve just see increase of, you know, taxes and shipping and all of that, that kind of weighs in on all of it. So yeah.
Kristen
I was just at Sea Otter and one of the brands I work with, they told me that their shipping costs have increased three times like to get one of their containers used to be like $10,000. And now it’s $30,000 to get this shipping container, which is wild.
Kemi
Yeah, yeah. That’s I listened to a podcast that Ken Lousberg, the CEO of SRAM was on and he said, “Man, if I’d had a crystal ball to buy a ship, like I would have.”
Kristen
Right.
Kemi
That that’s, I think where we’re at, so yeah.
Kristen
Let’s see, is there anything that I haven’t asked that you would like people to know about WBR?
Kemi
Um, I think we’ve, we’ve covered it quite a bit, I, you know, let me just share just a couple of statistics just because those are kind of nice to share, and kind of get an idea when we just talking about girls and school, we see 28% reduction and absenteeism amongst girls students with a bicycle. Pretty significant. We’ve also seen a 33% reduction in time traveled to school, 88% increase in patient visits for community health worker, health care workers, which is huge, huge amount of people they’re able to see and, you know, distribute kind of AIDS packets and health care checks even, and spreading news about COVID. You know, like, there’s all these things that these health care workers – 88% is pretty huge. So really amazing to see that. And then 23% increase for dairy farmers able to deliver more work or more milk. And that goes kind of along with several different entrepreneurs and how they’re how they’re working.
Kristen
With the health care workers, or are there many of those health care workers that actually go to like, attend births? That was something that I was interested in.
Kemi
That’s a really good question. I know that there are I wish I had a story that talked about that. But I know that there are I mean, they cover we have so many different health care or health community volunteers, I guess I should say your health community workers and organizations and a lot of those organizations will purchase the bicycle from us as well. They know how much of an impact this is making on their you know, on their health clinics and, and being able to support so many more people but I that’s a really good question. I can find out more information and get back to you but I’m sure there is. But I don’t have a great answer.
Kristen
Okay, that’s fine. Um, where if you want to go donate if they want to learn more, where should they go?
Kemi
WorldBicycleRelief.org. All there.
Kristen
Very good.
Kemi
And if you want to join us for Pedal to Empower, it’s free. We’re really just looking for kind of that utimate goal of participation numbers and and getting people involved in and participating, that will be PedalToEmpower.com. You can go out register, you can create a fundraising page as well, if that interests you or give a little bit yourself as well. But it is free to register and be a part of it. And it’s not necessary to fundraise either. So yeah.
Kristen
And if you want to lead a ride, you can go put the information on there for that as well?
Kemi
We would love that actually. I’m glad you brought that up. My brain obviously isn’t thinking about the little things. Yes, there’s actually a place if you’re leading a ride, we can publish that too, on the you know, on this community pages for Pedal To Empower where people could find your ride and join you too. So yes, if you are willing to kind of promote a ride, we have several people out there saying, Hey, meet us Saturday afternoon at 11. And we’ll ride on the low end of the brewery or you know, like if even if it’s that simple. Or if you want to do weekly worlds at 8am on Saturday, and have it be a part of that. Yes, we would love to have any rides that you would want to host, to lead and, and kind of be a part of that event. That’d be amazing where we can share that. There’s a way to, I can share those details too. But it’s pretty easy to kind of find and follow along of now I want to share a ride, now I want to you know, do this in that registration.
Kristen
Fabulous. And we’ll include links to all of this in the show notes as well, for people who would like to go learn more.
Kemi
I’ll send you lots of good notes.
Kristen
Okay, very good. Three final questions for you. These are questions we asked at the end of each podcast episode. And they’re easy ones. The first one is what bike or bikes do you ride?
Kemi
Oh, well, that’s an easy one. I ride a Baum Corretto road bike. It’s a hand-built titanium frame out of Australia. And an Open UPPER. It’s my gravel bike. And I just got an Evil mountain bike that I’m waiting on a few more parts and pieces for it to build up. So kind of trying to dive back into all of it. Yeah. Oh, and I do have I know this will probably you know, people may hunt me down for this one. I do have a Rad Power E-bike. I take it around town.
Kristen
I have the Rad Power Rad Wagon. I dropped my son off in school and pick him up and it’s fabulous.
Kemi
I hated to like drive a mile to the market when I needed something. And I was like, why am and I do have a little bit of a hill that I didn’t love hauling my groceries back on.
Kristen
But that was my thing, too. I was actually the most anti-E-bike person forever. I was that person. And then and then I got an E-bike and I realized that holy crap no, I bike everywhere now like all the places I would have driven before to get groceries to do all of the, you know, short little trips. And I’m the same way we live at the top of a hill. So just times like, I wouldn’t bike I would drive. Now I can bike because I have a new bike. It’s a game-changer.
Kemi
I got in the car the other day and I’m like, gosh, when was the last time I’ve been in the car like I love it actually. Yeah, you can. Good. I’m glad we could. Because that was a pretty anti-E-biker as well. Which is –
Kristen
You live, you learn.
Kemi
We can adapt.
Kristen
That’s right. Second question is: What is your favorite place you’ve ever ridden your bike?
Kemi
Oh, that’s an easy one. Colombia. It’s if people have not visited Colombia, especially in the coffee regions and around that terrain, it’s just it’s amazing. It’s every turn, every ride, every day is just epic. And it’s absolutely beautiful. I do happen to live in one of those beautiful places to ride as well. So I get spoiled every day getting to ride to near woods or you know the beach are amazing places here but Colombia would be kind of my, my favorite place away from home.
Kristen
Amazing. Yeah. Last question is what do you love most about riding your bike?
Kemi
The therapy the freedom and you know, like I said before it’s just the love of being on the bike and I think we all have it – just we, it gets inside you and you love it. And even my kids will say I think you need to go for a bike ride. If I’m starting to get a little cranky. Apparently, I just need a bike ride, which it does. It’s all I need. It just – it makes life better. So yeah.