Good Day Badass Listeners,
This week, I talk with Danielle Williams, founder and senior editor of the blog and Instagram Melanin Base Camp (with a monthly readership of 17 thousand), founder of Diversify Outdoors (a coalition of 29 digital outdoorsy types promoting racial and gender equity), and co-founder of Team Blackstar Skydivers (a diverse 270-member group from six countries—black, white, Latino, Asian, anyone excited about encouraging diversity in skydiving). Danielle, recently expanded to video with a Kickstarter-funded short film she’s producing about black Canadian climbing prodigy Sabrina Chapman.
A Few Lasting Impressions:
1. How do we tell new stories? I think breaking away from constraints of how it’s always been done is a hard thing. What is something innovative or desired by an audience unaccustomed to hearing their own stories? Can we know what we want if we've never seen/read/heard it? This is way more mind-breaking than what it first appears. And I suspect this is one reason why main stream media outlets are struggling with how to create more diverse coverage. 🎤 Stay tuned for an upcoming episode about sports coverage where we use candy vending machines as a metaphor. 🍭
2. Danielle is very upfront with her changing perspective of disability. Through illness in 2015 she went from being super athletic to occasionally hiking three miles. For athletes it can be hard not to have bias of those unable. As Danielle points out, we’ll all probably end up disabled at some point, she just ended up there sooner than expected. I’m not always comfortable talking about disability. I really thank Danielle for opening up the conversation. Stay tuned for an upcoming episode with a Paralympic sailor.
3. I love that she took a troll's idea and created brilliance!
4. Show Notes this week are jam packed with resources.
HOT TAKES FROM THE EPISODE
☄️"I really believe in the importance of telling other people’s stories or helping other people share their own stories."
☄️"I normally don’t take advice from trolls, but that was one exception."
☄️"It’s an amazing feeling. I don’t know how to describe it."
IF YOU LIKE THIS EPISODE, try these:
🎤 Episode 63 Tenzin Namdol an immigrant focused on the outdoors. Listen Here.
🎤 Episode 38 Ambreen Tariq Founder Brown People Camping. Listen Here.
🎤 Episode 27 Shelma Jun Founder Flash Foxy. Listen Here.
🎤 Episode 39 Kristen Lamb on her strong mom. Listen Here.
🎤 Episode 60 Rebecca Ross Melanin Base Camp blogger. Listen Here.
I'M READING NOW
✶ Trek President John Burke honored by the Women's Sports Foundation. In 2017, Trek created the World Cup Waterloo cyclocross race, the first-ever UCI cycling event to offer equal payout to racers in the women’s and men’s fields. This is a super big deal! Burke & Trek have continued to support women's cycling.
✶ Dolemite Is My Name. I'm a huge Eddy Murphy fan and here he is telling a different kind of story.
✶ Lindsay Gibbs, co-host of Burn It All Down just launched POWER PLAYS: a newsletter for people who are sick of hearing bullshit excuses, and ready to see equality for women in sports. It's free.
Welcome to Fast Track.
Fast Track episodes will be short and show up (almost always) in your feed between the regular line up. They’ll max out at 20 minutes and could be as short as 5.
In the first episode, meet Julie Pedalino of Pedalino Bicycles. As you will hear in this episode, Fast Track will focus on a topic. Julie, a bicycle builder, talks about bike fit particularly for those riders who fall outside standard, off-the-shelf sizing. Besides being innovative, smart, and technically adept, Julie makes incredibly good looking bikes. (She is a visual artist, which we also talk about.)
Before Julie started building bikes she was uncomfortable riding and thought that was just the way it was. She told herself, suck it up, suffer, don’t complain, no one else is having an issue. Of course, now she has a beautiful, perfectly fitting bike.
I ask specifically about wheel size and why that is important for designing geometry for smaller riders. Most people probably don't realize that using smaller wheels is an option. It is! and now that there are excellent offerings in smaller wheels and tires it's a really good option. Take a listen to hear more about smaller wheels, custom forks, along with a bit of bike-nerd geometry chat.