Slashdot Mirror
Bamboo Bike A Reality
markjugg writes "The American Bamboo Society has a page describing a working bamboo bike. This is a strong step towards making bicycling more sustainable, expecially in contrast to aluminum, one of the most resource demanding materials that exist."
Before you say that bamboo is weak and easily dismembered, here's a quote from the article:
But Flavio makes me see things differently: Bamboo is a resource of immense potential. And it is strong too. What makes it possible to build bicycles from it is that it is stronger than steel when strained in the longitudinal direction, 17% to be exact.
The main point of the article, of course, is that bamboo is much more environmentally friendly than metals while being extraordinarily plentiful.
i've seen this before on a show called gilligans island...
fact: microsoft > linux
Does any one see a set of brakes on this thing?
Yes, I know that some bikes have the brake mechanism in the hub of the rear wheel, but that doesn't appear in the photo either.
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
Look closely at the picture. Now, tell my where the breaks are?
This would work fine, except that pandas eat bamboo. Better not get into a forest with that bike.
They're probably just trying to bamboozle us...
A power source for the coconut shortwave.
"Born in Pennsylvania, Gilligan worked at a gas station before joining the Navy where he saved the life of the captain, becoming his "little buddy." In gratitude, when the Skipper started his own charter business, he hired Gilligan to be his first mate despite his incompetence. Gilligan's childlike nature makes him the perfect errand boy often performing many of the menial tasks on the island such as riding the Professor's generator bike, acting as manservant to Mr. Howell or collecting coconuts for the girls. It should be noted, some claim Gilligan's first name is "Willy", though none has been able to prove it."
TV Land Rules
It's those little strips of bark that hold the bamboo together that are keeping the industry from taking off...
"I might have made a tactical error in not going to a physician for 20 years." -- Warren Zevon
How likely are insurance companies going to reimburse me when my bike burns to the ground?
Or is taken down by termites?
Or causes splinters after a bad road crash?
Will they insist on brakes?
Is the poster serious ?
r ustmaterials.html
Aluminum makes up 8 percent of the crust of this damn planet. http://www.csulb.edu/~rodrigue/geog140/lectures/c
expecially in contrast to aluminum, one of the most resource demanding materials that exist.
That's funny. Aluminum is indeed expensive to extract and process and that's why it's also the most recycled mineral(?) in existence.
This is all good until someone gets attacked by a Panda. Yet another version of "meals on wheels!"
Next week we can all read about the follow up stories from the America Plastic Association, the American Balsa Wood Collective, and the Society for the Reuse of Aluminum Foil...
Davak
...than the American Cheese Society's offering.
Bicycling more "sustainable"? Haven't the environmentalists been trying to get us all to change to bicycles from cars supposedly because of the pollution that cars generate? And now not even bicycles are "sustainable" because they are "resource intensive"?
When does it end? Should I just stop using resources altogether (i.e. die?)
I won't post this anonymously precisely because I mean this quite seriously and not as a troll. Mod me down if you must.
Justin
I am a bike-geek as well as a Lunix-Geek:
The bike is a single-speed. That means it does not need gears, breaks or even a ratcheted freewheel (on the back wheel)... the pedals are connected directly to the rear wheel by the chain. If you want to slow down you use your legs.
Single-speeds are favourites of city-couriers, where there is a great advantage to have a light-simple bike. There is less to break (XTR gear systems are known to wear out after a few weeks of couriering).
As for Aluminum - dont get me started on that nasty harsh material. There has been a disturbing trend for wannabee bikers to adopt the freakiest lightest materials at the expense of all other properties.
For me, steel still has the edge over all these fancy materials. A steel frame will last for years of hard riding, and still feel as plush as the day it was first ridden.
There is no "sustaining" bicycling. You build a bike, and it's done. It's a durable good.
As for aluminum, it's manufacture costs is due to our limited foundary technology, not because of any peculiar property of aluminum. Also, aluminum is a relatively rare metal when compared to the iron it often stands in for.
Rather than deforesting vast tracts of already endangered bamboo forests (which is already leading to the demise of the Panda - not that the stupid beast deserves a future in the ecosystem), folks ought to consider carbon fiber for the bicycles.
I do a lot of mountain biking. I know there's some engineers who read /.
There are suspension forks which can be purchased for mountain bikes and some offer read suspension.
Assuming, the metal suspension fork is kept and a decent diameter bamboo tubing is used - would the bamboo have sufficient strength, durability and shock absorbing qualities to make a good mountain bike?
One way or another it would be interesting to try, that's for sure.
so I can escape any rogue pandas.
This is a strong step towards making bicycling more sustainable
I don't think this is more sustainable if we can only develop such a bike now, even though the Chinese have been using Bamboo for thousands of years.
Why not just make the bikes out of hemp instead?
Hell, alot most experimental homebuilts are made from it. Cheap.
anyone with a saw can steal a chained bamboo bike.
It's been done before, many many years ago. see Bicycling Science
Move along there, nothing to see.
T&K
Political language
Expect to see this in the sharper bric-a-brac for around three grand.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
I wonder if this would me more or less expensive than a traditional bicycle? I usually try not to pay more than $200 (CDN) for a bike, because they always get stolen (even if they're locked up... those bastards).
:)
Since bamboo is so plentiful, I hope this would be uber-cheap. It would be great if I could ride around on a $15 bicycle... I wouldn't really care if it got stolen, but then again, nobody would really want to steal it if they knew how cheap it was...
Finally! A bike that you can vandalize by setting it on fire! And you don't even need any fuel to start it! Burn baby, burn!
- Think for yourself, question authority.-
My Structural engineer friend told me that Bamboo is better than steel if used properly and since it just grows like grass it's basically free.
A bamboo bycicle would be neat but, as a natural product you aren't going to get uniform material to work with so every bike would probably be completeley different to an other. You wouldn't be able to mass produce these things.
Doing a little googling I found this report about using bamboo instead of steel in reinforced concrete.
any way that's my bit out of the way.
A
now that would a vvvveeeerrrryyyy pppoooopppuuulllaaarrr combination, if you build it from bamboo and tie it together with hemp...
Oh well, what the hell...
This is a strong step towards making bicycling more sustainable, expecially in contrast to aluminum, one of the most resource demanding materials that exist.
It's a cool looking bike, but there's a few things worth mentioning. First of all, compared to driving cars, any form of bicycle is the most sustainable mechanized transport imaginable. I think if we have to worry about the fifteen pounds of metal used for each bicycle, then we might as well give up all hope that humans can survive on the planet. Because if things are that bad, the millions of people buying SUV's are going to put us over the edge in no time, no matter what material we fashion bicycles out of.
Secondly, the summary says that aluminum is "one of the most resource demanding materials that exist."
That statement strikes me as terribly disingenuous, if it's not also mentioned that recycled aluminum does away with about 95% of the energies needed to extract aluminum from ore. And besides, how many bicycles are actually made from aluminum or fancy alloys/composites? No bicycle I've ever ridden, I know that much. And certainly not the bikes that are going to be produced for developing countries.
The real question here is how much extra work goes into fabricating a bamboo bike, vs. mass producing a steel-framed bike that's totally useful to anyone who's not a racing enthusiast. Because I would bet that making bamboo bikes in quantity would take fivefold or even tenfold the labor of stamping out cheap steel-framed bikes. And if that's the case, bamboo bikes could never be within reach of the poor.
Given how eco-friendly a steel-framed bike is, it's probably counterproductive to devote attention to an alternative that would probably be fundamentally unsuited to mass production.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
This may seem like a pain, but fixies are actually extremely popular among a certain bike subculture, particularly urban bike messengers. The famous and wonderful Sheldon Brown has an extensive collection of articles on building and riding fixies.
...Nothing interesting here. Just move along...
The only problem with this...is who would want to ride something so darn ugly? I mean, this looks like the kind of bike vagrants would pass over. Maybe it's just me.
'This is a strong step towards making bicycling more sustainable, expecially in contrast to aluminum, one of the most resource demanding materials that exist.'
Do bikes really use so much aluminum that it has a noticable effect on the aluminum market? There are many, many things that use aluminum, and I have never heard of the industry having troubles being "sustainable."
you're kidding, right? .. alkjsdfl;kajsfd;lja
alksjflkajsdf
fucking slashdot
"Building these bicycles is art. It is not something you just do. Every bamboo must be selected and fitted into the frame according to size and quality. The secret lies in treating and handling the material the right way. Learning that takes times and the maintenance takes time as well."
Yes, refining aluminum belches lots of nasty stuff into the sky. But at least you get lots of bikes quickly thanks to interchangable parts. How many resources (food, water, electricity, etc) are required to sustain the people building one bamboo bicyle a day?
I'd rather have a million people riding aluminum bikes and zero SUVs than 10,000 people riding bamboo bikes and 990,000 SUVs.
I question whether this is an environmental good thing. Using bamboo in stuff means *importing* bamboo - because if you try growing it anywhere other than where it's supposed to be, you can destroy your own local ecology. So it has to be imported, and you're economically tied to the few countries that can grow it in quantity and to the right quality. Steel and aluminum, on the other hand, are easy to get locally, and can be shaped in ways bamboo cannot. Plastics and carbon fiber can also be made locally, and carbon nanostuff will eventually also be available locally. And all of these other materials can be recycled, whereas bamboo can only be burned or mulched.
You also can't mass produce bamboo products - as it says towards the bottom of the article, the guy that makes these needs to hand-select everything for quality. Remember, you can cut the length of these, but not the diameter - you're stuck with whatever diameter it grew to - so precision is extremely difficult.
I don't see any brakes on that thing.
Tried that Hemp bindings caught fire.. fumes made me eat
3 bags of Oreos
2 peanut butter and banana sandwitches
and
consume 2 gal of rippl double fudge ice cream
Diplomacy is the art of saying "Nice doggie" until you can find a rock. Will Rogers
Damn, a pile of punji sticks on wheels.... a crash would be horrific.
"It's so convenient to have a system where everyone is a criminal" - A. Hitler
Particularly in the orient, but in other places as well when times were either hard or when metals were subject to civilian restriction, such as during WWII. Wooden bikes have also been used at times.
They don't work very well. Bamboo is strong, but it's also very flexible. This is also the reason that molded plastic bikes ( as opposed to fiber reineforced plastic bikes) have never worked. If a plastic is ridid enough to make a good bike frame it's also to brittle.
Aluminum is energy intensive to originally produce, but the cheapest and easiest metal to recycle. It also doesn't rust away to unusable oxide, making aluminum the most green of the metals in the long run.
In any case you'll still find most bikes made of steel, because iron is common, easy to smelt, easy to turn into high quality steel, easy to recycle, cheap, and, while not necessarily the highest performing material for a bike frame in any particular measurment, it is, nonetheless, in the top 90 percentile in every attribute needed to make a good bike frame.
What's more, you need very little steel to make a bike whose usable lifespan may be measured in decades. I have two ridable children's trikes over 100 years old.
There's simply nothing about bamboo bikes that make them more sustainable than a steel bike, and they're nowhere near as good.
KFG
and you too can have spears of splintered bamboo go through your torso.
Weeeeee!
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
Eventually, it'll become easier to produce bamboo bikes, and this technology could be implemented in Asia, for instance, where there is a huge need for easier transportation. Not saying bamboo bikes are more durable than any other material under any stress, but no one's going to bike up an unpaved mountainside in a bamboo bike. Maybe 10-30 city blocks, which it ought to be suited just fine for. Heck, I'd get one to use around campus. Might get the attention of the crazy eco-freak girls around here =P. And I doubt anyone would want to steal a bamboo bike anyway.
Has anyone succeeded in getting Linux to run on one of these?
Aluminum is one of the most resource intensive materials on Earth? And I thought printer ink was bad. In any case, judging by the amount of Mountain Dew I drink, I should be able to fashion about 20 bikes a year. I don't see any bamboo growing up here in the frozen tundra of Minnesota. The choice for me is obvious.
This sounds great to me, but man I hope that bamboo doesn't work its way into my garden. Has anybody here ever tried to weed bamboo out of a garden?
My mom planted bamboo once, and then, a few years later in the course of reorganizing her garden, asked me to dig it out. Ugh! That stuff is worse than an Outlook virus! It sends out needle sharpd shooters in all directions. If you see a single stalk poking out of the ground, it might have sent out shooters ten feet all around it. The only way I was able to finally dig it all out was to wait until after a heavy rain and basically just turn the "garden" into a mud soup pulling it out.
I've found that my posts don't format quite right w/o a sig.
Can't wait to try one!
Oh. Wait. I guess this involves going outside, doesn't it? Dammit!!!
And it's considered exercise?! SOB! Does that taunting never end?!?!
It turns heads in Christiania because it is the only bike that doubles as a hash pipe.
While it's nice and kinda classy, we all know this sort of production is only OK because it's not being mass produced. If this ever became popular, I wonder how long it would be before you heard the tree nazies coming out of the woodwork complaining about bamboo depletion and such. After all, how many bicycicals does a place like China have? After all, bamboo produces more oxygen than it's pulp counterparts, making it far more valuble, etc etc etc...
Beware Mr. Deslandes... The Tree Nazies cometh.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
Hmmm. I'm looking forward to getting impaled by a broken bamboo shard after falling in a minor collision (or sitting on a slightly weakened stem/seat post). But seriously, I would think this would be difficult to produce in any quantity because bamboo varies in size, unlike metal components. Other than that, I think this would be a cool LA Venice Beach thing....
-Sean
Is the poster using a bamboo clock? This artical is from the Whole Earth Winter 2001 Issue ("http://www.wholeearthmag.com/ArticleBin/444.html )
Rigolo
As a miner, I think I'll stick with my metal bike for now. Unfortunately, since I mine for gold and platinum-group metals here in Alaska, and a little gemstones and other interesting minerals, I'm holding out for a gem-encrusted strategic-and-critical minerals bike.
Plus I grow weary of this save the earth crap.
"If there's no time for fun, then what are we saving the planet for?"
The fancy carbon fiber you're talking about is made from heated cotton or other vegetable fiber held in a matrix with toxic resins.
Christiania's Bicycle Shop
Don't know if they will accept mail order, though.
A bike is very light and uses very little metal compared to a car, with comparable life times. I doubt very much that bike production is of sizeable ecological impact compared to other productions. :-)
Sweet!
Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them? --Abraham Lincoln
They had a bamboo bicycle that powered the washing machine.
Did anyone see the episode where the professor made a bamboo car? Why he didn't just make a bamboo boat is beyond me.
Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way...
They're believed to be related to racoons. Take a look at the lesser panda.
to anyone who can succeed in running Linux on an unmodified bamboo bicycle. Oh, and they have to turn me straight, too. I am James Mulu, son of the late Nigerian finance minister.
will the next model have a cupholder?
A bike is no good unless it is comfortable and rideable... also it serves no practical value unless it can stand up to the rigour and pollution of city (or country for that matter) life. Of all the materials I have tried (Alu, Carbon, Steel, Titanium) - Steel is still the best all-rounder and my personal favourite. Steel makes for a plusher ride. Steel frames can withstand bumps and scratches without loosing their strength (much). If you want a bike that feels good, lasts longer and does not weigh much more than an alu bike, go for a high-quality steel frame.
I guess I don't fully understand the nay-sayers. I do see the points people are trying to make: they don't trust bamboo, they don't use an aluminum bicycle so why should they want a bamboo bicycle, it's not stylish enough(?), it has no brakes, etc. None of these are the real point at hand. I think the real potential is in third world countries, where many people don't own any sort of bicycle. I just returned from 16 months abroad this spring. Some of that time was spent in Laos and Cambodia, riding a bicycle through relatively untravelled parts of the country (yes, mine was aluminum, but locally bought). Bicycles are not only a major form of transport there, but also veritable industrial machines, used to carry everything from giant sacks of rice to building materials to children. Often a family will only own a single bicycle, if that, which often the children must use to get to school, as school can be quite a distance from the home. The ability to have a cheap bicycle, made from sustainable materials is an incredible thing for these people. Think about it. They all have bamboo groves in the villages for building materials. The ability to completely rebuild your own bicycle from materials you have on hand is a great thing. Then, think about how many bicycles are produced every year to meet the demands of not only first world users (how many people do you know own one bicycle for every member of their family), let alone third world users. To be able to use a renewable, cheap resource, even for part of the bicycle's construction, is incredible. When I was in north east cambodia, I talked to some travellers who had visited a remote village where several of the children had some pedalless bicycles built entirely out of bamboo. Aparrently they were pushing up the hill, and coasting back down, but still I thought it was very impressive, and would have loved to have seen it. Not to sound fanatical, but I would love to own one of these bamboo bicycles. I currently don't own a car, and bicycle everwhere, and owning a bamboo bicycle, if for nothing else the pure novelty of it would be really cool.
You can also get an environmentally friendly bamboo :-)
b am boo.htm
guitar to go with the bike.
http://www.giles.com/yamaha1/pressreleases/PAC/
siggy played guitar
I'll no longer have to lose sleep over the potential of the bamboo bike.
- A real programmer uses $ cat > a.out
I dont know about everyone else, but my first couple of bikes only had one speed and no hand brakes. To slow down you just pushed back on the pedals. Damned if i know anything about the mechanism though, i was just a little kid and didnt care.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Whoa Beavis, this bike's made of grass
A guy at calfee has a bamboo diamond-frame bicycle with titanium components on the ends. For those who don't know they are like the name in carbon fiber diamond frame bikes. (And starting to work on recumbents too.)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Technically speaking it does look like a single speed, but also a fixed gear. A fixed gear bike has less moving parts and therefore less chance of breaking down. The downside is that you will want to choose a gear that deals best with the terrain you are in.
My fixed gear bike is running a ratio of 46t/16t chainrings (over a 2:1 ratio). The one in the photo looks more like a 24t/18t (close to a 1:1 ratio). Bottom line is you won't be picking up too much speed on this thing, but it should make the hills easy to climb and momentum easy to stop.
Are the brakes necessary? For this bike, no. You can quickly bring this thing to a halt and in a worse case scenario put your feet down for a Flintstones stop.
I probably shouldn't have to point this out to geeks, but electrons make up approximately 0.1% of the ocean, by mass. They are also readily available in such common items as dirt, and renewable resources such as those that are grown for food.
There shouldn't be any concerns about consuming too much electricity.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
I'm sorry, but 'sustainable' biking is, I think, WAY down the list of the earth's major environmental concerns. Come on!
Arguably, that should be "...one of the most resource demanding materials that exists..."
I have twice been injured or nearly injured by metal bicycles breaking at the welded joints. If metal folds under pressure so easily, then what makes you think I am going to touch a Bamboo bicycle?
(And please don't tell me to lose weight. That's my wife's job and she does it too well. The first breakage was when I was a skinny teen anyhow.)
Table-ized A.I.
Finally! A bike that I can feed to pandas!
"Screw slashdot." -- Linus Torvalds
One of the primary reasons (even beyond weight and durability) why the SCA uses rattan instead of bamboo for weapon shafts in its mock "heavy" combat is that it does not splinter but instead kind of "pulps" when it breaks. The concern on the battle field is that splinters could easily be driven through helm eyeslots. There's enough risk in taking a blow or falling in armor during normal fighting that extreme hazzards like that are hardly welcome.
After all, we can't have anyone getting hurt during a war, can we?
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
The bamboo joint can't be cut!
I'm not sure how you'd make a bike from it, though.
Rather than deforesting vast tracts of already endangered bamboo forests (which is already leading to the demise of the Panda
Bamboo can grow anywhere you have sunlight, soil and the proper temprature.
Considering some bamboo can survive -20 deg F, large sections of the planet can grow the grass that is Bamboo.
not that the stupid beast deserves a future in the ecosystem
After reading your post, I'd suggest the same be applied to you.
I am a classical guitarist and have often thought of this possibility. I also fly fish and love old cane rods. There is nothing like bamboo technology! So a bamboo bikes make a hell of a lot of sense. Really picks my but when people ignore the craftsmanship of centuries and are ignorant of the real possibilities. Same thing goes for hemp, and I do not mean the kind you smoke. So all you enviro tech ignorant plastic and aluminum junkies can just eat dust. Oriental bamboo tech can replace much of the environmentally ignorant technologies of our wastefull western manufacturing methods. There is no reason why the two technologies cannot co-exist and mingle. If we reduce our dependance on resource hungry wastefull methods then this is the way of the future.
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
My biggest complaint is the "sustanability" issue. I have a 20 year old steel bike that I ride almost daily. I have a baby seat on it and cary my two year old duaghter. That's not something I'd do with a bambo bike. Durrability is part of sustainability. How many times can you unglue that bamboo before you have to dispose of the knockouts that hold the thing together? Chome-moly frames are probably the most practical because they are high strength (yeah better than bamboo per weight), rust free and can be made without endurance limit. Direct use of petrolium to make composite materials is much better than burning the stuff and carbon composites have a fivefold strenth to weight ration advantage over aluminum.
It's a beautiful and well designed bike and it encouraged in my speedbike experiments by this. I've got plenty of bamboo for prototyping and it's much cheaper than carbon composite tubing. Where did he get those knockouts? Time to hit the search engine. While this is good for a prototype, I would not sell one of these things to anyone but a young healthy person who understood that one day it could fail. For a real production bike, I'd fall back to composite materials or just plane steel.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Alright, this is a completely rediculous conversation, kids. This bike is very clever, and I'm sure it works very well for the builder, but there is no way in hades you'll ever see such a thing manufacured in the US. Why? Liability. This bike may be fine for pedaling around the streets of Copenhagen, but I bet I could destroy it inside of 10 minutes on my favourite trails. True- that is not what it's intedended for, but in court that would hardly matter. It's a nice project and a great idea, but don't get any tree-hugging save-the-world ideas and quote lateral stress figures. Take some engineering classes and go visit a custom bike maker before you think you are qualified to think this is a good idea. It ain't gonna happen.
Alright first off, I really do trust the strength of bamboo and its general ability to not snap in half. My problem is that the bar that goes from the handle bars to the rear axle only appears to be on one side, that really doesn't seem to structurally sound, I'd make two bars like that one and cross them to opposite sides of the rear axle underneath the crossbar. And the other thing, I really hope bamboo doesn't swell with water, otherwise the thing could work great one day, then the next after a rainy night all the bamboo would be rattliing in those sockets. Not sure if thats a problem with bamboo but it's something to look into. On a little side note, I would never ride this thing. It looks like an easy way to see how good bamboo can pinch skin. (Note the point where the cross bar intersects the bar running from the handle bars to the rear axle)
"Building these bicycles is art. It is not something you just do. Every bamboo must be selected and fitted into the frame according to size and quality. The secret lies in treating and handling the material the right way. Learning that takes times and the maintenance takes time as well...? Flavio Deslandes says...
Using bamboo may be some sort of holy grail for bike transport enthusiasts, but I seriously question its current practicality. Training and paying artisans to select the perfect materials and then assemble bikes would more than detract from the benefits bamboo provides. Steel bikes can be thrown together by machines.
Also, simple steel bikes require little maintenance, and the little maintenance they do require is in the drive train, brakes and bearings, which would apply to bamboo bikes as well as maintenance of the bamboo frame.
Is Joe Sixpack or Sally Secretary in Ho Chi Minh City, Beijing, Amsterdam or New York City really going to take the time to tenderly care for his/her commuter bike's frame? Think of the thousands of bikes in Japan that sit in the rain every day - would bamboo bikes survive even one year being wet most of the time?
RTFM; please, I beg you.
First off bamboo is a grass, second, i dont think depletion is a big deal, because bamboo can grow a foot in 24 hours.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Bamboo is also flamable...which leaves out common activities like jumping through flaming hoops, or over a burning tar pit. Being made of wood, I really wouldn't want to ride a bamboo bike while juggling chainsaws. There are lots of arguments against bamboo bikes.
Personally, I would love to see more natural fibers in bikes. Rather than making the whole bike from bamboo, making just a few pieces helps reduce the consumption from the titanium mines.
Sig: Flamable materials are dangerous, which is why I always make sure the products I buy are clearly marked as "inflamable."
That's not a bad thing, but it is a bit faddish.
The new bamboo cutting boards are harder than rock maple and very beautiful. And I've been lusting after a new bamboo hardwood floor.
The missus just got some invasive bamboo for the lower pasture and some arrow bamboo for over-wintering indoors. It may be a while before I harvest my first fishing pole however.
Is there a reason why the SCA is made up of worthless geeks who want nothing more than to suck each others' med-ren loving cocks?
Schwinn has now flexed it's IP rights and begun to sue bamboo farmers all across Southeast Asia. Farmers are being offered a chance to buy a bamboo license for 30 piestas apiece which allows them to continue harvesting their plants legally.
Splinters.
And in the worst possible part of your anatomy too.
A hemp bicycle would be much better.
Kids, to those of you who just don't have enough reasons to be picked on and beaten up in middle school, we give you... THIS BAMBOO BICYCLE!
Complete with a detachable frame for easier caning.
If you open yourself to the foo, You and foo become one.
"And besides, how many bicycles are actually made from aluminum or fancy alloys/composites? No bicycle I've ever ridden, I know that much."
Try any road bike, ranging from low-end to high-end. Sure, the sexiest material to use nowadays is carbon fiber (i.e. Lance's Trek), but there are many many bikes frames that use aluminum. Cannondale might be the most famous for it (all they way up to their CAAD7 frame), although admittedly even Cannondale is starting to get into carbon fiber. Their latest frame, which Saeco is riding in the TdF, is a blend of both alumimum and carbon fiber.
Bamboo is used every day in Asia for contruction work (you use wood+steel, they use bamboo). Seems strong enough (in the right orientation, yes).
I saw a paper bike from Japan once. I believe it was a research product, not something that was actually for sale. Still, it was the same kind of idea: use tight paper cylinders to have longitudinal strength. IIRC, it did not have a losange frame. It might have been to deal with the problem of tension, forces, etc applied in the wrong direction.
Not exactly a new idea, but still cool. Maybe the design should be improved.
Try Corewar @ www.koth.org - rec.games.corewar
As I park the bamboo bicycle in front of the Shop in order to have a black currant juice it feels almost as if I am dismounting a Harley right next to a café
Or the experience could more in tune with showing up on a flaming unicycle while wearing a clown suit. The only thing funnier would be if this conversation were taking place in a biker bar. I'm sure some good Harley riders would not hesitate to share their feelings regarding this very unfortunate metaphor.
...yeah, I did get that backwards. Aluminum is something like 8.5% to irons 5% of the earths crust...the point I had hoped to make is that aluminum is just waiting on a better production and smelting technology to come along.
I've been dreaming of this for years!
Fine, get excited about the technology involved here, but spare me the statements like that. Everytime I ride to work, I keep a car or about 1/30th of a bus off the road. (I realize I'm not actually 'keeping the bus off the road', but work with me here.) I don't even need to go on about what a retarded statement that is, to call bicycles anything but a vehicle of sustainability.
What's next? Smack-talking a water powered car because it's a drought season?
You know what?
Wonderful. Right up until you pull a wheelie, and the frame shatters and spits you from anus to esophagus. Yegads, but that's a big splinter you've got there, son!
I would suspect that greenpeace is under stating how much of the ship is recyclable. After all if they said "100% of the ship is recyclable" nobody would care about small trace pollutants. If they said "85% of the ship is recyclable and 15% is pollutants" people would dismiss their claims as ridiculous, clearly less than 15% of the ship is non-recyclable pollutants.
I think they stated the best number they could to support their agenda, but I wouldn't be suprised if the true number were around 98-99.
Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.
Edward Everett (1794 - 1865)
You've got to be kidding me. How much does a steel bike weigh, 50 lbs? I'll stick with my 22 lb mountain bike thank you very much.
If you bust your ass on this thing, you'll wish everyone else but you had to ride bicycles made of stuff that grows in the back yard. Remember when Henry Ford had his engineers make a car out of soybeans? Lots of later uses for the technology and all, but he did get a lot of laughs at the time.
If Greenpeace is distorting the stats to support their position, they would be doing it in the opposite direction; the poster's point was that if ships were just scuttled greenpeace would probably be up in arms about it.
At least fucking read the post before using it as an opportunity to bash your favorite environmental boogieman.
*knits, waits patiently for bamboo Intel chips*
Cannondale or Trek are probably not the class of bikes the third world is expecting to ride. More like Huffy, Schwinn... the types of bikes you'd find at Walmart or a random department store.
Most people with modest means who just want to ride probably won't buy their bike at a bike shop which means they're going to buy a bike based on price or from a salesman that probably doesn't know a thing about modern bike technology. Simply put, the bike most non-cyclists are going to get is steel framed.
Now again, do you think most bikes sold are steel, aluminum or carbon fiber. I'd say they're the mass marketed steel frames.
Its quite hard to describe what plush feels like - generally steel is at one extreme and alu is at the other. You really have to compare an expensive steel bike vs an expensive aluminum bike to feel the diference. Steel bikes are tough, but not 100% rigid. The result is that some of the bumps and buzz are taken out of the ride. You can feel it in your elbows, wrists, knees and ankles./ Alu on the other hand is much more rigid (being a softer lighter material they have to use fatter tubes so they tend to flex less). The result is that unless you have a whole load of suspension you get all the nasty road-buzz. The quality of ride depends not only on your frame & suspension but also on the wheels and cranks you use.
If you're caught out of food on a desert island (ok, don't ask me how the bamboo bike got there) you can cook and eat your bambucicleta. I eat bamboo now and then (my wife is Japanese) and it tastes good (no, not like chicken...).
Try that with your aluminium or steel bike...
A phenomenon ocurring when you watch TV or read Slashdot.
Also, dupes abound and people watch/read the same things over and over and over...
BTW, Mr. Editor, if you're going to dupe this story next week (haha, I really mean tomorrow), at least change it to oak next time...
>Being made of wood, I really wouldn't want to ride a bamboo bike while juggling chainsaws.
Riker: Nice to meet you - Pinocchio.
Add to this, that we're talking 'unsuspended' bikes here. The feelable difference between a suspended bike of any two materials is below most humans threshold.
I had a chro-mo framed hard-tail (unsuspended) mtn bike for a few years, and then had the chance to add an aluminum framed bike just like it to my stable. The chro-mo bike could be taken off the paved path into the river-rutted dirt beside it, and no need to slow down - it'd just fly through the rocks and ruts pretty darn stable. The aluminum bike, when put through the same maneuver, HURT! And controllablility was not as good - it wanted to bounce way too much. (and, yes, I've been riding a few decades now, and know not to make this compare on soft tires vs hard - thus the road-to-trail experience. Tires up to road pressure to keep rolling resistance down, then BANG - into the rough! That'll expose the differences.)
Of course, some people are as sensually astute as a rock is smart, and they love to talk about how there's no difference if *they* can't feel it.
until someone has an accident and ends up looking like the victim of a Viet Cong tiger trap, skewered by bamboo shards in a dozen places.
Here is the homepage of the company. They haven't added the bamboo bike yet, but, I have mailed them and urged them to add it http://www.christianiabikes.com/english/uk_main.ht m
OK, just wanted to use my philosophy words- but in any event- the argument for the bamboo bicycle relies upoin the argument that it is more sustainable, which in relationship to bicycles is true, but, and this is a major but, the reality is that the unsustainability issues we face as a planet today come more from cars and industrialization, not so much from bikes. If bikes were the major form of transportation for the US (the most horribly unsustainable country in the world today) then this would be a major news piece, but its not. The answer is for more people to get bikes of steel, aluminum, carbon, hell even ti and worry about the sustainability of bikes after cars are on the downtrend (not that this will ever happen it seems)
Potassium Nitrate and diesel fuel.
I had a wooden bike once. Only problem was, it wooden go.
- - - - - - (c) 2005 Irrelevant Postings, Inc.
if you're worried about how much resources are consumed in making aluminum. Besides, most (and I mean MOST - not necessarily the best) bicycles are made out of steel.
Metal: Melting Point:
Steel 1500 C
Aluminum 620 C
source:
http://www.weldtechnology.com/rwintrod
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." -Jesus Christ The Lord's Prayer
I'm going to keep it in my garage with my Segway(tm) and my electric car.
I'll order one as soon as I finish this bag O-lean chips!
ôó
Built in Christiania and no built in bamboo hookah pipe? Must be an engineering flaw. Those guys make greatful dead fans look like yuppies.
Environmental and durability isssues aside, this thing is darn cool! I could even make a Japanese mod with it...
I hope this is cheap enough, I want one.
Prescriptive grammar:linguistics
One word: Fission.
5 Billion years worth of (practically) free power to smelt all you want.
If environmentalists with the IQs of earwigs weren't being hoodwinked by the oil industry into believing that fission is bad, we'd have all the power we wanted. Instead, we have to breath polluted air and ride bikes made from popsicle sticks...
I've never heard a more ridiculous statement that "making bycicling more sustainable". Some people are just nuts, many aluminium plants are located near hydroelectric facilities (often built for that specific purpose), so the production of aluminium us perfectly sustainable too, just so long as it keeps raining.
Except when they are young and growing. Each spring, I top off the bamboo in my yard and usually play around with a few pieces popping them into their segments.
What, pray tell, is an "expecially"?
This is a really neat idea, but its hardly revolutionary.. If you aren't going for 100% metal free, its not that hard to conceive of how to use metal joints with bamboo for the straight pieces like they have done. Bamboo wheels may take some extra work, but its relatively easy to make a mostly bamboo frame. I am glad that someone had this idea though, in asian countries where there is little money but lots of bamboo, this could really help people.
He's writing ad copy for a bicycle company in Copenhagen under the name "Steen Heinsen".
Or so it would seem.
The Internet is generally stupid
This reminds me a bit about beer, arguing whether Samuel Adams beers are microbrewed or not, and which is the "best" microbrew.
The reality is, 80% of the beer drinkers in the US don't give a damn, and will buy MGD, Coors or Budweiser, even if they do like microbrews.
Most people who buy bikes in the US buy them at Wal-Mart or Sports Authority. They would not be willing to fork out more than $200 for a big "kid's toy". They ride it a few times after they get it, and 90% of those bikes then sit in the garage collecting dust.
Which is OK, because for most of these people, a ride more than about 2 miles long, at about a running pace (5-8 mph) is a "hard" ride, not to be repeated again. They ride with seats too low, pushing too-large of gears, and complain about sore backs and knees. But adjust the bike properly for them, and "it's too bent over". They really should get beach cruisers instead.
Which is what really most of the third-world bikes equivalently are...
I wonder if there is a way to use hemp in the manufacture of bicycles as well? Ford was experimenting building cars out of it, and using the oil from the seeds as raw material fuel to run those cars, but nothing ever came of that, unfortunately.
They make houses out of hemp. There is a hemp pulp that gets mixed with the right minerals and you can build walls. So far, however, the shipping from France, which is where you can get what is sometimes called "hemp concrete" or "hemp cement", has been more expensive than the product itself, which is rather inexpensive, and a relatively inexpensive way to build a house, or a shed, or a barn, etc....
Some hemp pulp and the right minerals to make a cement - molded into tubes or other shapes - maybe with a little bamboo helping out here and there... I bet you could make a fairly nice bicycle out of hemp products.
It cant be mass produced. Even the writer tells how each piece of bamboo must be carefully selected by a trained eye. People will claim 3rd world labor is cheap, but its also cheap in a 3rd world bike plant
Why did you post this as AC? I accidentally noticed it, and it happens to be interesting (unlike most AC posts). I'm not trying to say the difference in feel is not there. I am, however, objecting a bit to the use of the term plush to describe anything related to a bike's feel. It sort of reminds me of some frog asshole describing a wine's bouquet as naughty. Even if it is right, it's, well, wrong.
Anyway, by chro-mo I assume you mean chromium-molybdenum alloy. Right? And, you can tell the difference by going from smooth to rough terrain? Hmm, I can't. I am not trying to dispute that you can, just puzzled as to why I can't. I"m usually pretty sensitive.
everything in moderation
However, the cogs on the rear part of the bike have a one-way fixing. When you are peddling to the best of your speed, and it is faster than the speed of the rear tire, you will be adding power to it through a proper contact.
:)
However, if the rear tire is rotating faster than you are peddling (or the cog is rotating), the teeth will not click in. This principle applies to essentially all bikes, except for tricycles which have the pedals directly connected to the hub of the driving wheel.
The last time I rode my bike was 3 hours ago
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
I have a NewYork Krytonite lock. It cost me 160$ CDN. My bike has not been stolen, despite using it in place of my car since May. I will continue to ride it as such through the rest of my life, if possible.
When I am at home or at work, I have a designated spot inside for it. When I am out and about, I properly lock it to something that is bolted down, and I ensure it's around the main part of the frame. People could break off my bell or drink holder, or even pop my tires, but those cost maybe 30$, and I have replacement tires on me at all times. My bike is insured by Kyptonie: if the bicycle thieves can break the lock open, either by pick or by brute force, and I file a police report, they will reimburse me for up to $3,000 USD.
If you're using a chain lock or a U lock that cost 20$, it's no surprise your bikes have been stolen. If you're cheap, you'll get cheap. Spend good money on a quality bike, and spend good money on a quality lock. They'll cost the same in the end, because you won't have to rebuy new ones every year.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
I'll be looking for the cool bamboo computer case with a window in the side and blue lights...
Ceci n'est pas un post.
As far as I recall, most bicycles have a bend in the front forks, so that the line of the rotation of the front wheel/handlebar assembly (can't remember the name) doesn't intersect the axle of the front wheel, but goes about halfway between the axle and the ground. This is to make the bicycle a lot more stable in the steering.
I wonder how this is handled on a bamboo bicycle, where you can't put bends in the material? The photo doesn't make it very clear.
I have seen bamboo and other wooden bikes done before.
As some folks have pointed out, the problem with wooden bikes is that they flex. Badly.
That means your chainline won't stay straight. It will rub, and the gears will try to shift by themselves. Note that the bamboo bike in the picture doesn't have derailleurs. There's a reason.
To reduce flex, you have to increase the diameter of the bamboo tubing. At some point, it becomes impractical-- rather like riding a tree trunk down the street.
The designer of this bamboo ride seems to have tried to compensate for the flexy tubing by adding a brace across the main diamond of the frame. It really won't help much if the rider is strong or heavy. The bottom bracket is gonna feel like it's made of rubber.
There's also the matter of frame alignment. I don't care what you coat bamboo with--it's going to change shape with temperature and humidity. Even casual riders on low-end bambo bikes will be frustrated by a ride that doesn't track in a straight line.
My dad used to race track bikes with wooden rims. They were notoriously dangerous. Riding a bicycle is risky enough without having to worry about being impaled by its wreckage.
If you're really concerned about the resources consumed by aluminim or titanium framesets, there's always steel. Modern steel bike tubing approaches the low weight of aluminum and provides more forgiving ride characteristics. There are also cabon fiber and composite alternatives.
The bamboo bike is a head-turner. But bamboo sucks as a bicycle frame material.
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
This won't be as environmentally friendly if you use your panda fur gear while riding it. You know, that would look great.
Typical environmentalist. They don't understand many things.
"This is a strong step towards making bicycling more sustainable, expecially in contrast to aluminum, one of the most resource demanding materials that exist."
Sure bamboo may be cheap. But labor isn't... oh wait, these are the same people who drive gas-guzzlers to enviro-get-togethers to chant and rave about the pollution of the world.
Well you know what. Someone will have to hand-make these. These people don't care who makes them just so long as it's cheap(i.e. 3rd world).
"Look we saved the world from the aluminum pigs of the world. We anticipate saving of aluminum at 40 tons per day. In addition we've saved the world from millions of people eating the world out of house and home. We anticipate a sharp reduction in these worthless creatures."
F U environmentalists. People will always be more important than your adjendas.
1st - AC vs, say, yet another randomly selected, never to be used again, login name? Isn't that what AC is for? Maybe what you're trying to point out is this is a rather - uhm - supercilious forum when it comes to 'validity' of statements. And, maybe, with a 'regular' login, the 'score' would improve? Oh, well. I'll just have to live... ;-)
2nd - "Plush". I find it amusing that - as a phrase - it's being picked on as inappropriate for the hard subject at hand. Among some microwave engineers, the word 'Fast', when applied to computers, make them wrinkle the brow in consternation, as "Huh? MHz and GHz are 'fast'? THz are fast..." It's all relative, and in that context, it makes perfect sense. Not that I expect the swarm of absolutests here to get that...
Lastly - yes, chrome-moly. And that I could tell a difference suprised me! I've considered all the items that could explain the difference, even though I'd done as much as possible to level the comparison environment (same tire pressure, same stretch of trail, etc...). I've come to the conclusion it's a combination of material, frame geometry (fork 'rake' and rear frame 'trail'(?) can make a HUGE difference in road feel), and simple bike mass that leads to these differences.
That aluminum is so light, added to it's rigidity, makes for a more subjectively harsh ride. Less forward mass means more opportunity for vertical deflection on any given bump.
I still argue that the demographics of this place work against it in discussions like this. Many of the geeks here are so unsexed, they couldn't tell the difference between rubbing up against 000 grit sandpaper and a silk panty. And they pretend to have feedback on something this subtle? That's funny!
At the very least, the bicycle in the picture on the webpage has aluminum:
- Hubs
- Crank arms
- Rims
- Chainring
It's also likely that the frame lugs, fork crown, seat post, headset, bottom bracket and kickstand are aluminum.
If the author is so dead set against aluminum, I'd like to suggest they remove all aluminum from the bike before jumping up on the anti-aluminum soapbox and banging their drum.
Maybe they should be using titanium instead. I'm sure that's a piece of cake to process.....
rm -fr
Is this what it takes to get posted on slashdot.... making a bike out of bamboo?
What is the world coming to?
Lance armstrong would still win?
Casual Games/Downloads
do need glasses
Diplomacy is the art of saying "Nice doggie" until you can find a rock. Will Rogers
From the article:
Usually it takes quite a bit to make the roughies turn their heads
This can also mean you look like a moron.
It is beautiful, light and fast
Light, perhaps. Fast, if you discount the fact that without gears acceleration is crap. Beautiful, no. I'm sorry, it's ugly as sin.
As I park the bamboo bicycle in front of the Shop in order to have a black currant juice it feels almost as if I am dismounting a Harley right next to a café
You're a nut. Also see first point.
It is hard to find a disadvantage (to the bicycle) - except the material it is made from. Light bicycles are made from aluminum, which is one of the most resource demanding materials that exist.
Every morning there's 30,000 single occupant motor vehicles on the road in your city, spewing thousands of tonnes of toxins into the air you breathe, held up by the accident on the freeway that killed two people, and you're worried about the resources spent *building* the bicycles that carry 1/30th that many people to work in the morning?
Someday, when the biggest thing we have to worry about is the amount of resources spent on building an aluminum bicycle, perhaps then we can turn to bamboo. Until then, there are much better alternatives.
"Building these bicycles is art. It is not something you just do. Every bamboo must be selected and fitted into the frame according to size and quality. The secret lies in treating and handling the material the right way. Learning that takes times and the maintenance takes time as well.
Great. I want 1000.
Oh wait... haha. Silly me. You can't produce these in a factory. It's an art.
So um, they're not going to replace steel bikes?
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
You might be an interesting person if you weren't such a prick.
everything in moderation
I commute by bicycle and generally try to be friendly to the environment while the vast majority of my peers drive single occupant vehicles. Does anyone really expect cyclists to accept a guilt trip over the environmental shortcomings of a non-bamboo bike? On the whole I think my cycling is earth-friendly enough.
-- Solaris Central - http://w
Wattyl Estapol
Bonded aluminium is afterall a areospace technology
Adterall it your scenario one can't freewheel, which all bikes do
Virtually all single gear bikes have a back pedal braek,
One just pedals backwards & breaking force is applied
In the past, that was true about aluminum frames--only the mid-range to higher-end had them, because it involves welding in an oxygen-free environment, is a pain in the ass, etc. But try to find anything BUT aluminum now. Even the cheapie bikes are made of it these days.
In January, some asshole stole my beautiful (chromoly) Kona, and as a temporary fix I got a department store bike for around $100. And guess what it's made of? Aluminum. Yet it's heavier than my mom's old chromoly Trek.
I've discovered that although aluminum was once really cool to have, nowadays many serious bikers think it sucks. Check out the comparison chart on this page here (caveat: they manufacture superior steel frames, but I believe the data is still valid).
So that cheapo aluminum bike didn't get much use. As soon as I could, I got a frame made of Reynold's 853 steel. It's neck-and-neck with titanium (superior in many respects).
To anticipate any defenders of aluminum, yeah, I know they're coming out with kick-ass alloys these days, like Scandium, but I'll still stick to steel for now, thank you.
Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a soportar Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a espabilar
If you're not sure whether I like to joke, check the sig.
Aside from that, I would guess that anyone who knows that the ratio of masses, electron to water, is on the order of 0.1%, would also know that the issue of electricity is the issue of energy.
Anyhow, I thought it was funny. Apparently moderators thought your post was funny, to.
"To escape from our own island, we must each metaphorically kill our own Gilligan" ----John Tornblad.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
The 13th element (Al) is named Aluminium.
Somewhere along the way you Americans seem to have lost that last 'I' - time to learn the correct spelling please. I know its an extra syllable but you can cope it's not that hard.
I pretty much agree with what you're saying, although I disagree with your characterization that the geometry & materials of a road bike constitute the "proper" bike. Sure, for extremely long distance riding (30 miles a stretch or more - and I know you're laughing at me for calling that extreme, but it is on the extreme end of how far people ride bikes) where absolute speed is most important, a road bike is probably the right geometry. But for just about all other uses for a bike, it's completely wrong.
It could be argued that for long-distance travel where a certain amount of cargo needed to be carried, recumbent bikes would probably be better suited. And for urban biking, or biking on less than ideal road conditions, which would be the case for any "practical" bike (one that serve as primary transportation for someone), the standard beach cruiser, or some evolution of it is probably the way to go.
The road bike geometry is hard on your arms & back (until you're "in shape", or have built up enough scar tissue to tolerate it), too fragile to handle city & country bumps, and too dangerous in traffic, especially if you're using clip-in pedals. Yeah, it's the most efficient, but only for atheletes.
-BbT
Okay - the last bit was out of line, I'll admit.
But, hey! You can meet an interesting persons fairly regularly on the net, but how often do you come across an interesting prick?
My apologies to all offended.
Say I live in a fairly high-density city, in an apartment or condominium. I have a stove that is broken and old and not worth servicing to make functional again. It's dirty as hell, and just plain gross. Let's also so say that I don't own a truck. How am I supposed to recycle it? No one is going to come pick it up and still give me money for it, and even if someone is willing to pick it up for free to me, I still have to schedule and wait. However, there is the big trash can in the complex that is emptied three times a week, and I can get a couple of friends to help me heave it into the trashcan, and it'll be hauled off with all of the other garbage. Or, I can leave it sitting next to the trash can for it to be someone elses' problem.
A large amount of consumer waste isn't metal, it's plastic, ceramic, glass, or silicon. Metal things generally last longer. The big things that are metal are the problems. Recycling needs to be made more practical for them to be handled right.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Featuring a panda riding a bamboo bike, then munching it.
Ride your bike, and eat it too!
I don't see any brakes on that bike. Add that to the list of problems.
My trusty steel Lemond Zurich (Reynolds 853) tips the scales at under 20 pounds. It's for training and racing, and I chose steel over aluminum or carbon fibre very consciously. It wasn't at all about saving money.
The difference between a steel frame and an aluminum frame is commonly no more than two pounds. It's all the other components, cranks, pedals, wheels, seat, etc. that add up to the 16 to 20 pounds that a decent race bike weighs nowadays.
And why would someone -choose- steel, all else equal? Training and long rides on a steel bike is a dream, compared to aluminum. The steel absorbs vibrations and shocks in the rock that aluminum will mercilessly transmit up through the frame and into your hands, arms, and ass. When your hands and arms tingle for days after a weekend of training on an aluminum steed, you'll consider joining me in the pro-steel camp.
But Flavio makes me see things differently: Bamboo is a resource of immense potential. And it is strong too. What makes it possible to build bicycles from it is that it is stronger than steel when strained in the longitudinal direction, 17% to be exact. First of all, who is this Flavio and why does he know so much about Bamboo? Secondly, how can I get my floors tiled with it. It's stronger than steel! How can you go wrong!? Plus it would look waaay cool, and most likely smell good. At least I hope so. If it smelled good, and if only I knew for sure...
Many Thanks,
Luke
I live in Sweden and it seems like the majority of "shopping bikes" sold over here have coaster brakes. I would point out that these are NOT the same thing as a fixed wheel - you can stop pedalling without braking, you have to apply backwards pressure on the pedals in order to brake. I personally hate them, but my GF can't imagine riding a bike with hand-brakes.
A little planning goes a long way...
It's unlikely to be a fixed wheel, but instead it's probably a hub brake. With those you can freewheel and to brake you apply backwards pressure on the pedals. Hub brakes are extremely popular on "shopping bikes" here in Scandinavia - I would estimate that over 50% of the bikes on the streets here in Sweden have them. The advantages over a fixed wheel are that you can stop pedalling and rest your legs, plus a more controlled braking effect. Also if you take your feet from the pedals you run less risk of injury as the pedals don't continue to spin.
A little planning goes a long way...
this was over a year ago. see here:
http://www.biomega.dk/html/frames/bio.html
though its not made completely out of bamboo,
most of the frame is. nice design also.
http://gosub.dk
Yup, this bike is probably "single speed" - but it also probably has a hub brake rather than a fixed gear. This means that it can still freewheel (allowing the cyclist to rest their legs occassionally, and to remove feet from the pedals without the pedals continuing to spin), but to brake you apply a backwards pressure which induces a controlled brake effect. Hub brakes are very popular here in Scandinavia on "shopping bikes" - my GF hates to ride anything with hand brakes having grown up with hub brakes.
A little planning goes a long way...
What the hell are you talking about? You don't run on a bike - you cycle on a bike!
A little planning goes a long way...
will the seat be covered with poison ivy? will a vine be used as a chain? doesnt this remind you of gilligans island or what
Yes, but steel/aluminum won't rot,[snip] There is that rust problem though - there was an article recently discussing the millions (or billions) spent by the U.S. Army because of rust problems. Now there's a thought - bamboo fighter jets! Not too far fetched - anyone remember the Spruce Goose?
Sweet information! Just one picky question:
Interestingly, to meet the US's entire current energy demands with solar electric, we would need to cover about half of our roads, at no net change in albumen.
Are you saying that covering half our roads in solar panels would not affect the amount of egg whites available to the food industry? I beg to differ!
It's a well-known fact that in order to ask, "Why did the chicken cross the road?" you must be able to postulate a road for the chicken to cross. If half our roadways are converted to solar power production, there would be chaos in chicken coops across the country! Whoever heard of asking "Why did the chicken cross the solar panels?"
I predict a very large reduction in the country's albumen, to the point that Grandma's Lemon Meringue Pie will be available only in the most exclusive households. We must, as a society, decide whether this is a price we are willing to pay.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
FAKE glue holds it's airframe together.
Eat at Joe's.
there's some hippie in davis, ca who has one, since at least 1998.
ok, for the trolls, yes, death is a good way to reduce one's resource consumption. There are, however, more ethical issues surrounding death than there are surrounding not wasting gasoline. So until we come to a consensus on which people should die and which ones are worth having around, we'll just consider this to be a constrained optimization problem (the optimization is minimzing resource use, the constraints are things like don't kill people).
On the plus side, there are fewer ethical issues surrunding population control, so can be an excellent alternative.
Risky? If I ride my bike 24/7, I can increase my life span by over 5X!
/ risks.htm
.88 .47 .28 .26 *** .15 .08
From:
http://www.kenkifer.com/bikepages/health
Fatalities per Million Exposure Hours
Skydiving 128.71
Snowmobiling
General Flying 15.58
Motoring
Motorcycling 8.80
Water skiing
Scuba Diving 1.98
*** Bicycling
*** Living 1.53 ***
Airline Flying
Swimming 1.07
Hunting
Data compiled by Failure Analysis Associates, Inc.