Myself and my friend Kai recently took our fixed gears and old film cameras to Uganda for a crazy little adventure. I wrote a story for The Radavist and I thought some of you might enjoy it : )
Not content with using the right bikes for the wrong job, Stan Engelbrecht and Kai Pringle stick their fixed gears into some cardboard boxes and fly off to Central Africa for some unusual ‘lightpacking’ and the search for the cheapest roadside Rolex to keep them rolling.
It was one of those rare nights I was home alone, having dinner, drinking wine and zoning in on some old Lucas Brunelle clips on YouTube. Before I knew it I was 40 minutes deep and half a bottle of wine into Line Of Sight. Motörhead and A Place To Bury Strangers blasting. Lucas and two guys are ripping through the Guatemalan favelas, and one of them pulls out a machine gun and starts firing … what?! Now it’s a full-on high-speed action-movie chase scene with gunfire and screeching (bicycle) tyres. WTF am I watching!? It ends in a bloody mess on a broken concrete pier with Lucas in a pool of blood. The anti-hero dies at the end of this film … normally I don’t have much time for guns or action movies, but there is something about the absurdity of weaving this totally unexplained crazy little segway into a film about bicycle messenger races and fixed gear culture that is just irresistibly cool and anti-establishment. Classic Lucas Brunelle. I’m watching this and I’m thinking, “Why am I sitting on this couch? I should be off the beaten path, in a shootout on my fixed gear! Fuck this comfort zone!” I search ‘cheap flight Africa’ and ‘Entebbe Uganda’ flashed across my screen. Sure, why not. I’d always heard that Uganda was a very friendly place. I open Google Maps and have a look … Kampala (sounds cool), on the northern edge of Lake Victoria (yes!) – fuck it that’s good enough for me. Uganda it is. I zoom in and literally drop my finger on a random spot on the map. What’s there? Sipi Falls – looks awesome. It’s settled then. I’m flying to Entebbe and riding to Sipi Falls … read the rest HERE, on The Radavist.
by stanengelbrecht