 And welcome to Think Tech Hawaii. This is your episode of Pacific Partnerships in Education. I'm your guest host, Cara Miller, filling in for Ethan Allen. This episode is all about bamboo bikes Hawaii. In Pacific Partnerships for Education, we explore all the different projects, programs around education and sustainability throughout the Pacific Islands. And our story tonight is right here in Hawaii. And I'm very excited to introduce to you our two guests. Thank you guys so much for being here with me today. Oh, thanks for having us. Yeah, thanks for having us. So we have Barrett and Crystal here with us at Bamboo Bikes Hawaii. And I'd like to just get started by hearing about how you guys came up with this amazing idea to build bikes out of bamboo and maybe tell me the story of the original beginning of bamboo bikes Hawaii. Yeah. Well, we didn't originally set out to build bamboo bikes, I was actually trying to develop a line of furniture that used Hawaii's local woods and local bamboo, which we have in great abundance and there's so many that are underutilized. So I was really designing this new line of furniture and testing out some new joinery techniques. And just in that testing process, stumbled across the amazing strength of bamboo. I mean, it's pretty well known amongst bamboo builders, but it was my first experience like really seeing the great potential of bamboo. And from that, Crystal and I got talking about, well, how can we kind of showcase the amazing strength of this furniture and these new designs? And it was kind of a natural progression to build a bike because I used to race bikes. I was a bike mechanic. Crystal was also a biker. So we're like, well, let's just build a bamboo bike for the wood show. Yeah. We were just having a cup of coffee, brainstorming on things that could wow people in Hawaii and kind of sneak in there, some abundant resources that are found locally. And we were almost joking about it, like, oh, we should make a bike, and then we ended up doing it. And we were like, oh, yeah, this can be done. And it's an amazing, it's an amazing potential for the raw material of bamboo. This is real, it's interesting for me as a natural resources, environmental management degree holder, hearing a lot about bamboo and some of the problems surrounding it as an invasive species and how it changes the local ecosystem. But to me, I was always fascinated that there didn't seem to be the largest demand ever for the wood. And I always kind of didn't understand that. I wondered why, but it wasn't in a higher demand. Yeah, and that was on my mind, too, as the motivation to build that furniture was we have a lot of invasive species that are underutilized. Bamboo is probably one of the most notorious invasive species, because it just spreads like crazy. I mean, there's two types of bamboo. There's a clumping and a running, and the running is it just sends a runner and keeps going just through roads, across land, across acres. But then there's a clumping that is non-invasive, which people grow all kinds of different varieties. But yeah, these running varieties that we have in Nuonu and Tantal is over on a Maui seven pools area, they're on every island of this, especially this one running bamboo. And I've been experimenting with it since I moved to Hawaii in 2002 working on organic farms. Oh, cool. And we were doing all kinds of work, building structures and doing different things, find ways to use it, because it's like essentially have this near free resource. You just have to go get it. Right. And there's been a lot of challenges as far as like how to keep the bugs from attacking it for long term structures, you know, how to keep it from splitting or degrading. And so we've overcome all those challenges with, you know, step by step, figuring out like how to harvest for the best material, how to treat it for insects, how to keep it from splitting. And so basically creating kind of a nuisance, like a pest species, like running bamboo into something of high value, and it's just we have it right here ready to go. Yeah. That's something we talk a lot about that it's almost like we've coined that we have an heirloom quality of bamboo in the way that we select for it. Bear, it's been working with it for a long time and with this variety in particular, so he can go into the forest and kind of bamboo whisper which ones are at peak maturity and which ones are going to be the best in the end to build with. So and then there is like a year long drying process in there. A year. Wow. Yeah. There may be ways to speed it up and we haven't tried every single technique, but that's currently what we're doing. Yeah. Slowly drying so we don't shock it and keep a real stable material. And we can also use, I mean, you know, bamboo that people have intentionally planted, the non-running ones, the non-invasive species. And there's in Hawaii, we don't have a native bamboo, just one that the Hawaiians brought originally, but we don't really have a native Hawaiian bamboo. But the species that have been brought here have been brought here intentionally and are usually of really high quality there for construction or they have a particular like look to them. So what we have to pick from here in Hawaii is like the cream of the crop. So yeah, we're we're able to choose from stuff growing on Maui, Big Island, Kauai, Oahu, there's just so much of it and so many collectors on organic farms and or just any kind of farm really like homeowners in Mililani we've collected from there. There's like black. Ornamental kind of things. Yeah. Ornamental in Mililani, but like it's actually a high quality bamboo for construction. Of course. In that case it was blue, tropical blue bamboo, had like a slight blue sheen to it, but it's actually really stable, really like really great for building bikes too. And I feel like we've just scratched the surface as far as what we can do with building bikes. And I mean we can build all kinds of things other structures. It's just virtually untapped resource and we have the material just and people are excited about growing and you talk to farmers that are growing stuff and they envision a future where people are building with this stuff but there really isn't like the know-how yet. Got it. So it's kind of catching up. That's where you guys come in, in a sense. And I was going to say without a doubt you've become an expert on bamboo, whether you set out to do that or not, but I like what Crystal said that you're more than an expert, you're a bamboo whisperer. That's fantastic. So you guys were saying that originally you thought about building a bike out of this raw material bamboo as a wow for a competition. What did you say it was for? Yeah, the Hawaii's wood show and that's an annual competition of all the woodworkers in the state enter pieces into this show and it's really, it's one of the best shows that is probably on the island of artisan woodworkers and it's at the Lini Kona Gallery. So what year was that that you submitted the bike into the contest? 2015. And it just started to kind of snowball from there. It was my first year entering the wood show. I've been doing woodworking for many years, but I finally was like, I'm going to do it this year. And so it was such a huge honor for them to see the bike and they're like, wow, can we put it on TV? And then they're like, well, how about you do a presentation for the show? And I was like, it all just kind of started happening so fast. It's great. We've been running with it ever since and just we're a small company. We're just trying to keep up with everything that it takes to grow a new type of business too. And bamboo bikes isn't like a format that you just pull off the shelf and create, it's kind of like we're trying to figure it out as we go. So what people want, what people will buy, what's the best way to go here. So certainly, and it is, I like this term because I work in education. And this is a very education type of term, but it's a very place based company that you're running and place based in the sense that it's utilizing like you're saying a resource that we have in abundance that isn't currently being used to what it could be and a very, very high quality in fact. And it sounds like the kind of larger vision behind this is what is something that's useful for the community and potentially help in many different levels and areas of a community sustainability kind of initiative. A huge opportunity to start other kind of programs to build not just bikes, but all kinds of things you can build out of bamboo and thinking of different ways to use this resource because here we are in Hawaii. It's not every place has all these bamboo growing or even all those local woods. We have a lot of resources we can tap into that we're maybe not really thinking about what we've got in our arsenal as far as materials. Yeah, in our backyards. Literally. And just teaching people like the value of bamboo, a lot of times people aren't associating bamboo with the strength that it actually has. So we're really crafting that message very intentionally to show people we're doing structural testing and stuff like that to really be like, yeah, we can put 500 pounds of force on this frame and it's not going to break. So just different things like that to really educate people about what bamboo is. Because other places in the world in Asia they're using bamboo for all kinds of structural things. So it's really like an education process. Definitely. Wow, so you mentioned a few things that it is able to do when it is put into a bike. Once we have a bike that's made completely out of bamboo. Well, is it made completely out of bamboo or are there other parts in it? Well, yeah, we're shorthand saying bike, but we're really just talking about the bicycle frame, which carries all the weight of the rider and handles all the loads, whether you run into a curb or you're jumping off. Yeah, the frame is everything, it's the foundation, of course. Yeah, holds it all together, gives it the feel of the ride and yeah. So tell me a little bit more about that. What does making a bike frame purely out of bamboo, this amazing, strong, high quality bamboo, what does that do to the experience of biking? What kind of benefits does that bring to the capacity of the bike? Things like that. Yeah, a big thing in the cycling world is vibration dampening, like looking for the ways to have that happen. And usually people are on metal bikes, right? So that's going to transfer the vibration directly to your hands. When you're doing like an endurance or like cycling, it's great to not have that extra stress. And we don't really have to add anything additionally. Bamboo is naturally vibration absorbing. Yeah, because it's wood, it's a natural material. Yeah, so that is a great, a great... And one of the other things we do is we teach workshops. So people come in and actually build their own frame. So it's a kind of a unique experience to build something of quality that you can actually use in your regular life. And then like you're riding on a bike that you've built and there's a certain satisfaction that you can't get from just buying a bike or just more an item, it's just... I mean, you're actually riding on something that you're at hand in making. So that's a unique experience. Yeah, it's like a functional piece of art that we get to teach people how to make. And just having the own experience of making something and being able to use it is, you know, there's nothing that can really compare to that. Totally, that's empowerment right there. I really believe in that. So you're giving someone the ownership over the whole process of building something that then they get to use as their own. So that's neat. So I know you guys do these workshops. How long have you been doing the workshops? And tell me all about them. What are you, how long are they? Do I sign up and walk out with my own completed bamboo bike? For sure. Yes, for sure. There's been no... Nobody's been coming up short change on that. Everything gets blank at the end. So we started that about a year and a half ago, I believe it was. Our first one was at the Honolulu Museum of Art School. Oh, perfect. And that went off really good to have a really good space up there at the up in Tantalus at Spalding House. Oh, nice. So they kind of helped us get the ball rolling. And so we've grown since then, and we've gotten a bigger warehouse and workshop space at our own location in Kailua, Inkapa'a, Kori. So we have 3600 square foot warehouse and a backyard that overlooks the Kawe Nui March. So it's like a really sweet spot, like somehow in an industrial park at a nature preserve. Right. It's hard to find, but we got it. And yeah, we're holding our workshops there. And our next one is going to be in September from the 22nd through the 24th. So people ask what's involved, right? So you're not actually cutting the bamboo. We have all that handled for you. The bamboo is cut and dried and treated. So when you come, we have already taken your measurements. And you're building a bike that's custom to fit to you specifically, whether you're really short, really tall, or heavy, or whatever. And so the first day, we're cutting it to fit into this jig perfectly. We spend the whole day basically doing it. It's like a woodworking class where the bamboo is treated as wood, and we're cutting these very technical joints but walk you through it so it's not like you have to be an expert at it. You actually don't need any experience to do it. I'm not a woodworker by trade. Everything when we were designing the class was vetted on me. And am I able to make this cut with a hand saw, or are we going to have to use a power tool? Which is a great resource for me, because I would have built it for experts and then nobody would have been able to do it. It's exactly always ground, the ideas with others. Yeah, so this is really great, you guys. I want to hear more about the workshop and more about the process of what is even involved in getting the bamboo prepared to use to build the bike. And we're going to take a short break right now and we'll be back in exactly one minute. Thank you. Hello, I'm Dave Stevens, host of the Cyber Underground. This is where we discuss everything that relates to computers that just kind of scare you out of your mind. So come join us every week here on thinktecawaii.com, one PM on Friday afternoons. And then you can go see all our episodes on YouTube. Just look up the Cyber Underground on YouTube. All our shows will show up. And please follow us. We're always giving you current, relevant information to protect you. Keep the news safe. Aloha. 皆さん、こんにちは。 Thinktec Hawaiiが日本語でお届けする。 こんにちは、ハワイの日本語放送の コスト、クニスへゆかりです。 各州月曜日の2時からお届けしています。 日本語コミュニティー、ハワイの日本語コミュニティーに 便利なお助け情報、ニュースなどを ゲストを招きしてお届けする番組です。 こんにちは、ハワイ。 各州の月曜日、2時から。 ぜひ皆さん、見てください。 コストのクニスへゆかりでした。 Aloha. Welcome back to Thinktec Hawaii. This is your guest host, Cara Miller, for Pacific Partnerships and Education. Today with me, I have Barrett and Crystal of Bamboo Bikes Hawaii. So far, we've been talking about a little bit of what is involved in making a bike from bamboo. They source all of their bamboo locally here across the state of Hawaii, from various sources. Not just building these bamboo bikes, but they also host workshops. It gives people an opportunity to learn about them themselves. So, we were just talking a little bit about what's involved in these three-day workshops that you guys lead for the community, members that want to learn more about bamboo bikes and actually build their own and leave with a complete bamboo bike of their own. Tell us about these workshops, a little bit more about what's involved. Yeah, so the first day is like a woodworking class where we're cutting and shaping the bamboo in a really technical way, so we're holding your hand the whole way to fit into a frame-building jig. And then, we spend the whole day just getting everything in alignment and then we just tack it together. There's no real strength to it, but it looks like a bike frame and it can come out of the jig and you can see that it's a bike frame. And so then the next day we come back and we are changing our hat and we're now doing carbon fiber builds, composite builders. So we have the carbon fiber ready to go. The fibers got the epoxy impregnated in it so you just grab the roll and you start wrapping, hand-building these joints because the real magic that holds the bike together, I mean, that's always been the challenge with how do you build bamboo is how do you connect it? So it has to be... That's the joints. Yeah, to have a strong bond, it really has to be bonded with an adhesive and a fiber reinforced adhesive, like a carbon fiber or fiberglass or something of that nature. And the bamboo also needs to be prepared in a way that it can bond to that material. Yeah, hence the extensive preparation process. Yeah, we're doing a lot of preparation on that first day, not only just shaping the bamboo but also preparing the ends where there's gonna be contact with the carbon fiber work. So yeah, we're paying close attention to how people are building with the carbon fiber because it's so crucial that they do it right and that it's thick enough and everything's in the right proportions. And if anything, we're overbuilding it with the student bikes making room for that error. They're putting a little extra material than we would have if Barrett was just building it first. Yeah, when I'm just building bikes for Seo, yeah. Why your students would be safe. Yeah, we're not doing anything. Yeah, we might miss something with a student bike. But yeah, with the bikes that we built for Seo, we're focusing on lightweight with the strength because everybody is very focused on the weight of a bike. High performance, I mean, we didn't mention that too, but the bamboo is incredibly lightweight for strength too. I mean, it's lighter than a steel frame about the weight of an aluminum frame. So it's very, yeah, it's what people are looking for. And at these workshops, you have all the bamboo, you said you provide it. So you mentioned a combination of people that you're sourcing from and a combination of sectors. Like sometimes it sounds like government, sometimes more private sector, sometimes just residents that have bamboo on their land. That's how it works. Yeah, so when we're using the invasive bamboo, when there's a focus on using that for builds, we get in touch with DLNR and they've been working with us, giving us permits to harvest on a few different areas on Oahu. Nice. And we have huge stands of it. It's not like we can just go in there and just harvest a chunk and go out. Like it actually takes quite a bit of time to locate the ones that are mature enough to harvest. So that was one of the mistakes I made when I first started working with this variety of bamboo in the early days on the Big Island. Just going out, cutting the pretty ones, the big ones. And it turns out the prettiest ones are often the youngest ones. And they're full of sugars that bugs like to eat and the fibers are not as developed. And you end up not having quality builds. So the very first mistake to avoid is harvesting the proper material. Wow, really interesting. Hence the bamboo whispering talent that you had to develop in order to be able to find the best ones to harvest. Really, really interesting. So you've mentioned that it can bear a massive amount of weight, the strength of the bamboo as a wood, the lightweight quality, just as good if not better as an aluminum. What are, oh, and the vibration. It soaks up the vibration from the street. So any other big kind of positives that you get in this bamboo bike over some of the others on the market? Yeah, this might be a good time to show the pictures from our New Zealand trip that we just did. We built a new style of frame and we're packing on average between 20 and 35 pounds a day. You can see on the back and the front. And really we're on a gravel road there. It's like really tough conditions. So we did about 300 miles. I like to be a little generous. Yeah, just on that one leg of the journey. Yeah, we did 300 miles, mostly gravel road from Mount Cook is the peak there. That's where we started. And then we biked all the way to the coast in New Zealand, just following the terrain and camping along the way. And this is a rigid bike. There's no suspension. So this is where the bamboo really shines with the vibration dampening on gravel. It's absorbing a lot of that shock and the extra strength of bamboo can handle having those heavy packs on and handling the extra impact you're gonna have riding rough terrain with a load. Yeah, so this is called our touring bike and that is one that students can build out or people can buy that particularly if they just want to have Barrett make it. But it's a really popular bike, our touring bikes and our adventure bikes. So they can really, we've tested them out. We've made bikes for ourselves and rode them really hard for a lot of miles trying to see the limit of it. Right on, you guys. It's really, really amazing. So how many bikes do you think? How many bamboo bikes over the last few years, including the workshops of students and what you guys have made? How many are riding around the streets of Hawaii right now? We are getting close to 50 here now. So yeah, over the last three years, yeah. And we're hoping to streamline our production. We've been doing everything by hand but we're looking at ways that we can get some parts manufactured to help speed up the process and make it a little less labor intensive. Right now, for me to build a bike from scratch is about 50 hours. Everything involves, so it's everything from cutting the bamboo to the carbon fiber work and what takes exceptionally a long time is the finishing, sanding and applying finish several times to get it smooth and beautiful. If we didn't want it beautiful, we could probably do it in 20 hours. But we want a little rugged, like a bamboo bike. And I don't think we mentioned that, but that's the third day of our class is to finish it. So you can take this as far as you want or somebody like me, I'm like, I think it's beautiful as it is that little monster, right? I'm just like, have me with it and then he'll go and finish it. So you have a range of options that you can do if you want to be creative. Right, more personalized. Yeah, how far you want to take it. Yeah, and then most people, they're not like a bike mechanic, so we handle the whole sourcing all the parts and assembling it. So a few bike mechanics have come through the class, but it's been a little, I think it's a little bit more pleasurable to just go in and say, I want that one. Build a frame, and then a few days later, they're picking up a bike they can ride. They don't want too much brain overload. No, it's already pretty intense as it is for three days. So I think that's enough to bite off. But what I love that you guys are also doing is that you're creating a space, a venue, for community members, anyone to come in and then create something that's helping the environment and using a renewable resource and something that they can feel a personal connection to. So I know that there's been a lot of conversations around biking and biking here in Hawaii on Oahu specifically. And how I know a lot of our roads historically haven't been very bike friendly, bike or friendly, but it seems like that's changing. Do you guys want to say a few words about that? Yeah, I guess, I feel like our role in Hawaii, like as, we're actually the only frame builder in Hawaii, so of any material that is like a commercial frame builder. So I feel like our role is to just get people hyped up, give people the opportunity to build their own frame and just get excited about cycling while like the complete streets projects and the bicycling league are really fronting that advocacy for bikes. And I feel like the whole system is fantastic that it's improving and like I'm excited to see bike share and everything happening. Yeah, yeah. I've really noticed just over the last few years that this kind of momentum is building with more bike lanes are coming in, you're seeing more people biking and I mean it just, there's a momentum building and at some point we're gonna get that critical mass where like it'll, more people just start wanting to bike and feel safer on the roads and we're all about it. I mean we're out there supporting every event that helps biking advocacy and we work with the bicycling league whenever we can, boosts at the century ride and that kind of thing. Yeah, just getting people new ways to get excited about building bikes or riding bikes is building bikes. Exactly, exactly. So that's a little part of it. I mean, yeah, we do what we can. Yeah, definitely. And do you guys work with people of all ages, kids, as well as adults? Yeah, we've had a lot of inquiries about kids coming to take the class. The trouble with younger kids is that we're working with epoxy so if that gets in your eyes or whatever it's kind of, it can be risky. Lively a little bit. Yeah, we're not there yet. Hopefully we can develop a class that's more kid friendly. Maybe we'll use a different resin that's not so, has to be handled so carefully. Yeah, and I envision it in the future maybe working with high school students or something like that. We know other projects in other countries have developed ways to teach it in high schools and we're open to all of that. So just whatever opportunities come up for spreading it out more, we're totally into. Yeah, I think that's a great idea because if you did bring it into a school or bring it into that kind of form, they wouldn't need to go the whole way. They could build, they could get everything ready. Yeah, they could be ready for the frame, yeah. The woodworking side or the finishing side. Right. And maybe just hand it over and get the things wrapped structurally. That could be a good work or not work or not work. So what is next for getting to the end of our time, unfortunately, but what would you say is next for bamboo bikes Hawaii? Yeah, so we're trying to expand out to get more cyclists from the mainland to come over and take our workshop. So we're working on different appealing ways to have people have like a biking vacation almost. That's a good idea. To kind of help bring cycling, like have Hawaii seen as like a cycling destination. Also, we're going to the Taiwan Bike Show, Cycle Show. Ooh, nice. And then we just signed up for Nabs, which is the North American hand-built bike show in Sacramento in March. March. But the next thing on the agenda is our workshop in September, which is September 22nd through the 24th. Awesome, September 22nd through the 24th. And it's just one week before the Honolulu Century. Yeah, the Honolulu Century ride. So we timed it like that so that people are already coming in to ride, then they can come take the class as well. Very smart. Well, this was a great way to help get some of that word out. And I can't wait to see where you guys take this company and I can't wait to see more bamboo bikes on the street and I want to come take a workshop. So when I get back from my travels, I'm going to call you guys up. Awesome. Thank you so much for coming on the show today. Thank you. And thank you so much for tuning in to Pacific Partnerships and Education. This is your guest host, Cara Miller.