A while back, we wrote about Calfee Design's ultra-hip and ultra-green bamboo bike frames (See: Riding on Grass: Calfee's Bamboo Bikes). Now company owner Craig Calfee is expanding his bamboo line to include a tandem option for the dynamic duo who seeks both a high quality, smooth ride as well as a bike that's easy on the environment.

The main frame tubes are stalks of bamboo which are smoked and heat-treated. The tubes are joined together with lugs fashioned from either carbon fiber or a hemp resin for the ultimate green-machine.

Calfee has been designing top-level bike frames for going on 30 years now. His specialty has always been in carbon fiber, including custom bike options for those with specific wants. Within the last couple of years, Calfee has increasingly added bamboo options to his lineup, including road, mountain, cyclocross, and now tandem bike options.

Calfee has teamed up with David Ho, a former Calfee customer, to found the Bamboo Bike Project. The idea is to provide cheap, practical, and sustainable transportation to villages in Ghana and other west African countries.

Rather than shipping containers of bikes and parts from China or India, the Bamboo Bike Project seeks to teach locals to grow their own frames, cut and treat the bamboo stalks, and assemble the bicycles. Only the components, a much smaller and cheaper package, would need to be shipped in from abroad. Calfee claims that an entire bicycle can be assembled with a swiss army knife. Even the frame construction requires very simple tools with no electricity required.

See also: Riding on Grass: Calfee's Bamboo Bikes
Pastor Peter’s Pedal Power: Bokamoso Bicycle Project

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