Grow your own bicycle

i-3bb028e2b05e008c17f6b5032df45f05-pandabike.png

Ok, maybe we're not quite there yet - but Panda Bicycles is making bikes out of bamboo. These partly renewable, lightweight bikes are striking, to say the least - though they're not cheap. But if you really want to make a statement with your bike, this is one way to go. . .

i-6815fc4396c4f3487ba869bb5ef6a1f2-panda_poster_web.jpg

Thanks to reader Linda for the link!

More like this

Last weekend, the Free-Rides visited the National Zoo in Washington, DC. Here are some of the animals we saw: The giant panda. Younger offspring: It eats a lot of bamboo. Elder offspring: Would do great living in a Chinese restaurant if it had a hundred bucks. Dr. Free-Ride: Why a hundred bucks…
In a perfect world, perhaps we'd all have already made our own homemade gifts for everyone, but most of us aren't that perfect. Many of us need to acquire some gifts, and the challenge is how to spend our money well, in things that are valuable, lasting and worth having. Over the course of the…
If you could travel back to Spain about ten million years ago, you'd have no end of animals to watch, from apes to bear-dogs to saber-tooth tigers. With so many creatures jockeying for your attention (and perhaps chasing you down for lunch), you might well miss the creature shown here. Simocyon…
For many people, it is the time of the year to put the bikes away. I live in Louisiana, so now is the time to get the bikes out (too hot in the summer). Learning to ride a bike is a curious thing. Most parents use training wheels to get kids started. I do not think this is the best strategy.…

Maybe now when I set a hipster on a single-speed on fire, they'll stay lit. Let's keep bamboo bicycles on Gilligan's Island, where they belong. ;P

By Kerry Maxwell (not verified) on 24 May 2010 #permalink

Renovo bikes makes a variety of wood-framed bikes, including a bamboo model. Practically bargain-priced, too, compared to those guys in Colorado.

http://www.renovobikes.com/

Sigh... Engineering 101:
Do not connect low modulus members with high modulus connectors. Or, if one connects flexible tubes (bamboo) with inflexible connectors (steel), the flexible tube will fail at the intersection, guaranteed. Just ask Calfee, whose frames failed there with carbon wraps, never mind steel tubing.

By Justsayin (not verified) on 26 May 2010 #permalink

Justsayin, according to the other commenters, a number of shops have been selling part-bamboo bikes for a while now. Which means your oh-so-obvious "engineering 101" disproof of concept doesn't appear to be stopping anybody in the real world. Interesting, eh?

Um, sortof interesting, but I think it's just human nature. Calfee Design, who has more experience with bamboo frames than everyone else combined, abandoned carbon wraps on bamboo tubes some time back due to tube failure at the connections. The fact that a number of shops continue with the same methodology is meaningless; lack of knowledge rarely stops people from embracing attractive concepts, however technically flawed they may be. Even molecular biologists couldn't stop the public's 20 year blind embrace of Laetrile, the completely bogus cancer cure scam. Flaws which are oh-so-obvious to a trained person are not even pesky technicalities to the blissfully ignorant, and sometimes knowledgeable people ignore inconvenient technicalities which interfere with marketing and sales. Sometimes those things turn out to be benign, sometimes disastrous, as in the De Havilland Comet Jet airplane crashes. And of course, folks sometimes come up with brilliant solutions to basic engineering hurdles, but they usually let us know. Justsayin.

By Justsayin (not verified) on 30 May 2010 #permalink