so… the weekend of july 9-11^th was sort of life-changing. i built a bamboo bike in brooklyn. i fell in love.

a few months ago, jenni posted this article on facebook (or her blog, or something. i’m sure it was she who posted it, but i can’t find it now.) about the bamboo bike studio. it all seemed pretty amazing – learn to make something neat with my hands!? help support a program that builds sustainable economies in developing countries!? invest time and energy into building my own form of environmentally friendly transportation!? perfect. and seemingly unattainable for a broke albertan. …then i found out that they were offering ONE class while i was on the east coast for my DC internship, around the exact same time i found out i was awarded that handsome $17,500 scholarship. so, since i had already decided to spend about a grand on a new bike once i got to victoria (thanks to my scholarships), i decided to splurge and register for the workshop.

like i mentioned a few posts ago, i went to the studio about a month before my class, because i was in brooklyn at the time and wanted to talk to someone in person about all the things i wanted for my bike. sean, the boy i had originally been in touch with, recommended i talk to a boy named justin, explaining that justin “is the most empathetic bike designer i’ve ever heard of; in all our years together, I've seen him make countless great matches between people and bikes.” so i did. justin talked about the geometry of my bike, the issues with shipping the bike to victoria, and the possibility of building up an 8-speed internal hub (this becomes an important issue later in my story). i was really impressed by the boys’ combination of knowledge and unpretentiousness. they all just seemed really radiant (and handsome), which made me even more excited to build my bike (and steal glances at handsome boys). i continued to hassle sean with endless questions in between that visit and my actual workshop, and he was always very helpful.

okay. then, on friday, july 9^th, at 5:30 p.m., i got on the bus in DC for the 4-hour ride to new york. i arrived in NY around 10:00, and in the meantime, started having massive cramps. you know the kind. mine are debilitating. since it was late-ish and i had to be up early and didn’t have enough energy to go looking for acetaminophen or something, i just went to bed at the hostel (on the upper west side) as soon as i got there without taking anything. bad idea. for three hours, i couldn’t fall asleep because my cramps were so bad (and so bad that i couldn’t even get up to go downstairs to ask the front desk for any medicine). finally, around 1 a.m., some french girl came into the room and since she was the only one awake, i asked her if she had any medicine. she didn’t, but she VERY graciously offered to go downstairs to ask about some. she came back with some acetaminophen, and within 20 minutes of taking it, i was out. i was pretty thankful for the kindness of strangers.

i woke up at 6:00 the next morning so that i could shower and then take the train/walk to the bakery we were all supposed to meet at in brooklyn at 8:00. we sat around and waited for everyone and ate a bit of breakfast, and then headed over to the studio at 8:30 to get to work.

when we arrived at the studio, each of the six participants had a jig set up with just a seat tube, and their name written on masking tape on the jig.

our first task was to gluegun the top tube, bottom tube (not sure if that’s the right term), chain stays, and seat stays to the foam lugs. don’t worry—my bike is not gluegunned together. we just did that to hold the pieces in place while we did some other things.

after that, we spent maybe an hour shaping the foam lugs. that was the most fun and satisfying part of the whole process, i think. i was really good at it, if i do say so myself. there were four lugs to shape: (1) the one at the headtube, (2) the one at the bottom bracket, (3) the one joining the top tube to the seat tube, and (4) the one joining the seat tube to the seat stays. the headtube one was the most fun of all. we just used metal files to file away the extra foam. all the foam grit that came off got all over us, and worked like a pumice stone, making our skin super soft afterwards.

the combination of the final shape of the lugs, plus all the touching and feeling of the shaping and filing, made the process feel super sensual—something i was not really expecting. i make lots of things withmy hands, but none of those things have felt that sensual.after that, we used epoxy to cross a few pieces offiberglass over some key points on the lugs. an important, but not necessarily fun, step. i

THINK that after that, we went for lunch so that we could get some energy and let the epoxy dry a little bit before the next step. my workshop-mate dale invited me to eat lunch with him at fairway (a really fantastic nearby grocery store, next to the water and overlooking the statue of liberty), which was really nice. dale is an american who has been living in bangkok with his boyfriend for the last few years, and he was really easy to talk with and listen to.

when we got back, we started wrapping (i don't have any pictures of that, because it was too messy). ugh. wrapping lasted about six hours. the wrapping step consisted of first donning an apron, blue plastic shoe protectors, and latex gloves, and then creating a mix of… mmm, i think it was resin and hardener. i know the words “resin” and “epoxy” were thrown around, but i don’t really know the difference. anyway, the two things we mixed together started heating up very quickly after being mixed, so we had to be careful not to burn our fingers if we left our mix for more than 10 minutes or so. we created a lot of garbage with all our changes of plastic cups (to hold the epoxy) and latex gloves, leaving me wondering how “environmentally friendly” the process really was (upon further reflection, though, i concede that a few plastic cups is still mountains more environmentally friendly than other forms of transportation). anyway, we spent those six hours coating carbon fiber with the epoxy,

following sean’s four commandments of wrapping: keeping the carbon “wet, wide, tight, and crossy.” i decided early on that i didn’t like the look of the black carbon on the bamboo (it seems too jarring to me), so i chose to wrap some cotton twill tape over top of the carbon. that meant that the whole wrapping process took me considerably longer than it took anyone else.

fortunately, the studio boys were patient and helpful, and offered to do some of my wrapping for me so that i could keep up with everyone else. even still, i ended up finishing maybe half an hour or an hour after everyone else. it was 10:30, and i was exhausted and didn’t relish the thought of walking through a strange neighbourhood after dark with my laptop to get to the subway, so i sort of dropped some hints like “hey, does anyone know the number of a good cab company?” so that maybe someone would offer to walk me to the subway. justin one-upped me: he offered to let me stay at his place, a few blocks from the studio. even if he hadn’t been a handsome, fun boy, i would have still taken up the offer, because i was exhausted and my subway ride back to the upper west side would have taken at least an hour. before we went to his place, though, we went for a quick bite to eat with some of the other studio boys at a bar on his street. i think justin bought me a beer, and i tried my best to drink some of it without making a face, because i appreciated the gesture, but i could only finish about 1/3 of it before offering it back to justin. someone also bought me a sandwich, but i am still not sure if it was eben’s dad (who had offered to do so – oh, and eben is one of the other studio boys) or justin (who, if i recall correctly, was the one who brought the sandwich over to me). hmm. i sort of tried to half-thank them both, without it seeming weird in case either was NOT the one who bought the stuff for me. eek. anyway, after that, justin and i went to his place and i told him i would be happy to sleep on the floor in the living room, but he insisted i take his bed, partially because he had another friend coming over to stay the night, and she would be sleeping in the living room, and he thought it made more sense for him to sleep out there too. it was a very kind gesture, and that, coupled with the french girl who brought me acetaminophen the night before, made me very appreciative and mindful of the kindness of strangers.

the next morning, i didn’t see anyone sleeping in the living room, and justin had said right before he went to bed that he would probably sleep in his friend erik’s room, but since i saw some small shoes in the living room, i sort of assumed this friend he mentioned earlier was with him in erik’s room, and that they were “together.” i was a little bummed out, but there wasn’t much i could do about it, so i slipped out at 8:30 and headed to the studio.

my workshop-mates and i spent the morning filing and sanding the epoxy we had put on the night before, to make it rough for a second coat. that was the first time in the whole process that we could actually sit, and we all took advantage of that because we were so tired. my feet ached from so much standing the day before. after we put the second layer of epoxy on, we broke for lunch. everyone else sort of left as a group, and i was left alone, which is something i would usually seek out but for some reason it bummed me out that day. when we came back, there were some new people at the studio, and they put together most of our components for us. i was a little bummed out about that – i had sort of imagined that we would be more hands-on in that part. oh well. it probably would have taken an extra-long time if we all learned how to add all of our own components. oh, a very important thing to mention here is that somehow, the studio boys had forgotten (despite some e-mails with sean, and a face-to-face conversation with justin) that i wanted to put an 8-speed internal hub on my bike. as a result, they didn’t have all the parts available, and i had to choose between a singlespeed freewheel and a fixed gear.

earlier this summer, i had asked kelsey (my best friend, and a bike mechanic) what she thought i should include on my bike, and she enthusiastically told me i should make it a fixed gear. i sort of resisted the idea, saying that i would rather have this one be an 8-speed for victoria’s hills, and that i could always build up a fixed gear at a bike co-op later if i wanted.

however, due to the circumstances, i decided to try out the fixed gear, and we also made it a flip-flop hub so that i could use a freewheel if i wanted to. sorry if those aren’t the right terms for all that, err’body. i also told justin that one of the reasons i had been interested in putting in an 8-speed was because he had said – when we met in june – that he could teach me how to build the hub into the wheel, and i was very interested in learning that. he said that if i had time the next day before heading back to DC, he could teach me how to do it so that i could build one up myself in victoria if i wanted. he also offered to let me stay at his place again, i think because he knew how much of a hassle it was for me to get back to and from the hostel on the upper west side.

once most of the things were in place (i mean, like, handlebar grips were still missing), we took our bikes out for test rides. marty (one of the studio boys) seemed especially nervous that i had decided to go with a fixed gear, despite having never ridden one before. the boys gave me lots of good tips on what to be aware of, and so i took off… and fell in love! i had not expected to love my bike so much, and i had certainly not expected to love fixed gears that much. my bike is light, but it feels very strong and it doesn’t wiggle or squeak like many other bikes i’ve ridden.

the geometry on mine puts my body in a more upright position than the other boys’ bikes, and i love it because it is very comfortable. this bike is the smoothest i have ever ridden, even though it has skinnier tires than any other bike i’ve been on. the thing i like about the fixed gear is that, as i described to my friend joe, it feels like the bicycle equivalent of walking barefoot in the forest. i like that it makes me more aware of what my bike and my body are both doing.

after falling in love with my bike, i dreaded the idea of having to pack it up to ship it to myself in victoria, and not being able to ride it for the six weeks between that day and the day i arrived in victoria. i wanted to ride it as much as possible, so i asked justin and another shop boy, josh, if they wanted to go on a bike ride with me. my inaugural ride on my new bamboo bike was across the brooklyn bridge, up lafayette (stopping briefly at a bar where josh and justin’s friend works, so they could visit with him – justin and i shared a cranberry juice, and we left josh there with their friend), around central park – stopping at my hostel nearby so i could pick up my few things that were there and check out, down along the hudson river, and back along the brooklyn bridge. we talked about a mazillion things, but i think our best conversation centered around anthropology (justin majored in it in his undergrad; i minored in it in my last undergrad and will be doing a master’s in it in the fall). right around here, our conversation about native studies/anthropology became the point at which we now both agree we started falling in love with each other.

when we got back from justin’s, i was exhausted, partially from all that hard work making the bike, and partially from trying very hard to control my bike using only my pedals and not my hand brakes. i fell asleep on the kitchen floor while justin was showering, but he woke me up when he got out so that i could shower too. as i was about to go to sleep, he said something to the effect of: “i had a really nice time talking, and i’d like to talk some more, if you’re up for it.” so we stretched for a little bit in his room, and then we just spent the whole night lying on our stomachs on his bed, with just our shoulders touching, talking until the sun came up.

so. that’s the story of how i fell in love building bamboo bikes in brooklyn. more to come on the love part later.

(also, if you’re wondering about the girl who was going to sleep over at justin’s – the one i was worried he was “together" with – well, they’re not together. she likes girls, and i don’t think she even stayed over that night.)

also: here are some links, in case you'd like to learn more about the bamboo bike studio, build your own bike, or creep justin:

bamboo bike studio blog

video from CNN