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Clinics allow cyclists to build bamboo bike |
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Tuesday, November 22, 2011 07:55 |
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Photo by Andy Cross, The Denver Post
By JASON BLEVINS, THE DENVER POST
BOULDER — With his gloved hands wrapping epoxy-soaked carbon-fiber ribbon around the chainstays of his bamboo bike frame, Dustin Sysko is relishing each moment of the nearly 20 hours he will spend building a bike from reeds.
"I've always liked the idea of making my own stuff," said the Boulder software developer and avid pedaler whose primary transportation will be the bamboo commuter bike he is building. "There's an element of pride in what you build, you know. It's a personal investment. This bike will have personal significance."
The chilly Boulder parking lot where Sysko and four others were building bikes last weekend is one of several nationwide workshops offered by the Brooklyn, N.Y.; Greensboro, Ala., and San Francisco-based Bamboo Bike Studio. Traveling in a 20-year-old box truck, studio workers host bamboo bike building clinics in Canada, Florida, California and Colorado, where no more than five cyclists pay at least $630 to construct their own, custom-fit bike out of bamboo, balsa, epoxy and carbon fiber.
Since the Bamboo Bike Studio was co-founded in 2008 by former U.S. Ski Team freestyle skier Marty Odlin, builders from several dozen workshops have created more than 450 bamboo bikes.
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