Tour de Thailand - Bicycling in Thailand Forum

Thailand Inspires the Bamboo Bicycle (http://www.tourdethailand.com/content/view/36/2/)
(http://www.tourdethailand.com/images/stories/articles/bamboo-bike.jpg)
What makes a bike frame with the smoothest ride?  Titanium?  Aluminum Alloy?  Graphite Composite Fiber?  If you want a bike frame that gives you a really smooth ride--maybe you should go chop down a bamboo tree.

That's just what Daedulus Bicycles does for their bikes: they build their frames out of bamboo.

Designers Liakos Ariston and Jacob Prinz started Daedalus Custom Bamboo
Bikes two years ago after drawing up designs on a napkin; so far
they've made a limited run of high-end bikes that sell for around
$1,250 each.

And where did they dream this up?  Why, on a trip to Thailand of course!  (It must have been the Chang Beer talking.)

Prinz spent time working for his family's construction company, but
it was on a trip to Thailand where he got inspiration from seeing the
bamboo woodworkers of Southeast Asia.

"I saw a lot of examples of
what people were doing and the structures they could build, it was such
a raw form of construction but at the same time they were able to build
things up to our standards," he said.

Read the full article at SanLuisObispo.com (http://www.sanluisobispo.com/business/national/story/87463.html)

Talking of bamboo bicycles reminds me of Stan Lowe. Stan ran a bicycle shop not far from my home in England, he started the shop in his late teens and keep it open until his death when he was about 90 in the late 1980's. A few of us were asked to catalogue the shop after his death - it was like an Aladdin's Cave! If I had the money at the time, I would have bought it, lock, stock and barrel but as usual, we never have the money when we need it. We found relics of a bygone era including about 10 sets of pre WWII bamboo rims.