// Bamboo Bikes, Item Deux
Posted on Tuesday, December 29th, 2009
I’ve already written about Bamboo Bikes in the context of the Bamboo Bike Project put on by Columbia University’s Earth Institute. That project trains bike builders in Africa to build inexpensive bamboo bikes for the people who don’t have other transportation, but are in need of it for access to work, trading, food, and water. That, of course was Bamboo Bike item un, which is why this is item deux.
Now, I’m writing about bamboo bikes in what seems like a context that couldn’t be more different. While the Earth Institute uses bamboo to build bikes for those in Africa who don’t have the money for or access to other bikes, the Bamboo Bike Studio allows those with plenty of cash to build their own trendy bamboo bike to be ridden around wherever they live. Except that maybe the context isn’t totally different.
From Bamboo Bike Studio’s website:
One weekend is all it takes to fabricate a frame from bamboo— a renewable and performance-positive material growing right in our backyard— assemble the components, and roll away with a custom-fitted ride, tuned to your body and cycling style. And the cost of the class directly supports the Bamboo Bike Studio’s efforts to seed the first bamboo bike factory in Ghana, where reliable and cheap bicycle transportation can dramatically improve access to jobs, commerce, education, basic food and water resources, and health care.
According to an NPR story on the Bamboo Bike Studio, people are coming from as far away as California and England to build these bikes. And why not? After all, you get to build the bike yourself and learn valuable lessons about how bikes are built in general. The bikes look cool, too. They look as though they’ve been taped together, but really the joints are connected by a material that soaks up epoxy. Much of the money you pay for your class and materials supports getting other, less well-off people on bikes in Ghana. And from the testimonials I read, it’s a comfortable ride, too.