An Amusement & Diversion for The Genteel Cyclist. Daily.

Monday, April 7, 2008

Peace pipes: Bamboo upgraded to cool, Pinch Flat downgraded to lame

As you know, I'd been poking fun last year at Craig Calfee's bamboo bike. To a know-nothing armchair critic like me, it seemed like yet another unsolicited and unwelcome reinvention of the wheel -- your typical clown-bike impulse to find the silliest material possible to build a bike.

But get this: I was totally wrong.

Bamboo is actually a phenomenal and sustainable bike-building material. And as this video from Craig Calfee makes clear, its availability in some parts of Africa may amp up bike relief on that troubled continent. Why? Because it's not so much the availability of bikes that's a problem (though Africa could use more bikes, for sure). The problem is that the bikes that are already there are largely pieces-o-crap dumped there by cut-rate Indian manufacturers, with no mechanics and no spare parts. And Calfee has created an ingenious method for using bamboo to reinforce wheels-- the weak link on cargo bikes that are often used to haul heavy loads of coffee beans, water, or other commodities.


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

could you get this video back up?