Hardwood flooring? Steel-like strength? Grows like a weed? Any of these come to mind when bamboo is mentioned? Maybe. But how about bikes made from bamboo? Probably not in your Top 10. Unless you're Craig Calfee, the man behind Santa Cruz-based bicycle shop, Calfee Design.

It's this type of thinking that will shift us from over-consuming resources to instead focus on solutions that use renewable and plentiful materials. Thankfully we've got guys like Craig Calfee leading the way.

So how did he get started? Well a few years ago he built a bamboo bike frame to run errands around town. A little too flexible at first (and prone to splitting), he made a few adjustments to make it stiffer and sturdier. "That first bike was kind of scary to ride," Craig admits.

But he knew he was onto something. Such an original idea is bound to spark questions and attention.

He began building bamboo bikes for friends, relatives and employees, and the popularity and demand grew among both everyday riders and even racers. That got him thinking again.

Never quite able to shake memories of a trip he made to Africa almost 25 years ago, Craig remembered three things: 1. There was a lot of bamboo, 2. People used bikes and didn't have enough of them, and 3. They needed jobs.

If these bamboo bikes were such a hit in Santa Cruz, maybe people in needy African communities and villages could build their own bikes to carry cargo.

So he put a small notice on his website to seek out funding for a trip to learn what it would take to get the idea rolling. The Earth Institute at Columbia University decided it was worth trying, and so the Bamboo Bike Project was born.

Kicking it off with a trip last Summer (and another slated for this Spring), Craig and his team identified Ghana as their starting point. Try to get the infrastructure set up and the supply chain worked out. Bamboo is everywhere, but what about epoxy? And resin? Two critical materials in making the bikes. There has to be a way to get these resources to the local villages if this idea has hopes of working.

Assuming the supply chain is set up, Craig needs to educate locals how to build the bikes, then he'll hand it over to them to run independently. The beauty of these bikes it that they require no electricity to build or fix, important features when resources are scarce.

"People spend 2-3 hours a day transporting water just for daily use and that’s a real drag on productivity," Craig explains. "So the bamboo bicycle will enable them to not only transport their own water, but they can do it for other people in exchange for goods to create commerce." These "micro-businesses" represent opportunity and the chance to be self-sufficient.

But not everyone thinks these bamboo bikes are so smart.

Negative comments littered an article that appeared on a Ghanaian website (that featured no pictures of the bikes). "Many thought the concept of a bamboo bike was insulting," Craig says. "They’d rather have advanced technology, not this '18th century' technology."

Craig doesn’t spend much time thinking about these naysayers. He knows the contribution his efforts are making, and that perspective keeps him going.

"If you travel in Africa and see the poverty and how much work has to be done just to survive, it makes anything you can imagine complaining about a joke. This is an incredible labor-savings device that can also become a desperately needed income-producing device."

"This has all the features of a successful idea, so I figured why not give it a shot?"

I have a feeling this is one idea that just might work.

 Photos courtesy of The Earth Institute at Columbia University