#alabamboo

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Alabamboo: Bringing Bamboo Back and Building Better Bikes

Ride or Die on IndieGoGo from Alabamboo: Ride or Die on Vimeo.

Last year I had the chance to join an amazing collective of Designers at Project M in Frankfurt. Now Project M has teamed up with Common Works to help build up the domestic production of Bamboo to Alabama, while boosting the local economy in Greensboro Alabama and helping bring more sustainable bike production to the states. 

 We branded the initiative "Alabamboo" as the first step to making Alabama mean bamboo the way Florida means oranges, Idaho means potatoes and Maine means lobsters.

In the summer of 2011 a rockstar team from Project M will ride from Greensboro, AL and journey across the United States on Common Cycles built with Alabama grown bamboo to help spread the word and build the buzz.

Think this is an awesome idea? Spread the word (facebook + twitter) and help make it happen!

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The Alabamboo make and ride

This summer a team of Project M cyclists will depart from Greensboro, AL and journey across the United States on COMMON Cycles built with Alabama bamboo to talk about the power of design and the awesomeness of bamboo. The Alabamboo team will plan stops at Universities and organizations along the way to facilitate Think Wrong workshops and discuss the power design has to positively affect the future.

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Ride Alabamboo & Common Cycles

The fearless foursome of Team Alabamboo stopped off in Tulsa, OK at the home of Jake Sullivan, who was part of the first COMMON MBA that launched Common Cycles.  Good food and good time had by all. The Alabamboo riders are going to spend a couple of days in Tulsa before making the trek to Boulder.  You can follow the team @ridealabamboo

Photos of the riders hanging with the Sullivan's.

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The Alabamboo Make & Ride

A group of four cyclists recently descended upon Greensboro, Alabama to build bikes with locally grown bamboo and to ride them across the country making their way to San Francisco. The project is part of a collaboration between Project M, Bamboo Bike Studio, Common Cycles, and a local effort to advance the growth of "Alabamboo" as an agricultural cash crop in the United States.

Check out the photos from the build and follow the ride at RideAlabamboo.com.

[ridealabamboo]

MAKE: Two weeks, Alabama, bamboo and bikes.

Our two weeks in Greensboro have been a whirlwind of hot weather, late nights, bike grease and loud music. Add a stray puppy to the mix, throw in some good ol' American beer, tons of new friends, and of course, don't forget the bamboo. Never forget the bamboo.

We'll embark this weekend and our scenery will change. We'll meet new people and we'll encounter new challenges. We'll wake at dawn to ride until it gets too hot, and we'll sleep wherever we find ourselves at the end of the night. We'll engage in conversations about the power of bamboo to transform economies, environments and communities. We'll eat a lot of peanut butter, drink a ton of water, and sometimes we'll ignore the internet. We'll pedal slow, we'll pedal fast, and we'll get sunburned.

And, as the woman behind the counter at Sledge Hardware on Main Street urged us to do, we'll "learn a lot and have fun."

Here are some images to show what we've been up to. This is a beautiful place full of people with lots of energy, ambition and dedication to their community. We are so grateful to have spent time here. Hope you enjoy.

More soon. We'll post pictures of the finished bikes, we promise.

[ridealabamboo]

Notes on a route

We've received many inquiries into our schedule and route for our ride, and have mostly had to reply, "We don't know!" We figured we should explain. "We don't know" is correct. We don't know when we'll be coming through your town. Yikes! We'll try to give you notice and we'd love to see you, but we can't predict how fast we can pedal. This ride is about many things.

It's about promoting the value of craftsmanship and doing it ourselves, something we're currently experiencing as we engage in the build process from start to finish, taking bamboo from ground to road. It's about bicycles (obviously!), empowering people to RIDE! and supporting the people and organizations making cycling accessible to communities. It's about bamboo and it's about Alabama, and sharing the story of the individuals and organizations working hard to improve the social and economic fabric of the rural South through a sustainable, domestic crop of bamboo and related production industries. It's about collaboration. We're working with an epic cast of people to realize this ride, learning about amazing people doing impactful work in their communities and coming together to make positive change a reality. It's about exploring our vast and varied country, shaking hands and investigating places, learning about the communities we pass through and the landscapes that shape us all. It's about spontaneity, adapting, unplugging and taking care of our bodies. It's about getting lost, camping in weird places, leaving our computers behind and waking at dawn to pedal 30 miles before lunch. Sure, we'll Tweet and Tumble when we remember to, but forgive us if we are too distracted by the beauty of Arkansas forests or the heat of Kansas plains to post an update for a few days. This country's intricate beauty paired with limited AT&T coverage may make it difficult for us to post daily updates. We are deliberately keeping our route open and flexible, to embrace the unknown and be taken in different directions by our situation. We are letting our circumstance and location dictate our day's route. We are letting our day's route dictate our month's schedule. For the four of us this ride is a purposeful pause from the routine and calendar of a 9-to-5, and an opportunity to slow down and take in our surroundings day by day, moment by moment. We understand that we have a loving network of supporters, and for you we will do our best to report back on the Alabamboo story as we take it from small-town Alabama and towards the Pacific. We know we're leaving from Greensboro, Alabama some time next week. Our friends in Starkville, Mississippi (Hi Jamie! Hi Ben!) should expect us two days later. After that? We know we're heading west. We'll shoot for Starkville, Oxford, Tulsa, Boulder, Green River, Carson City, Yosemite, and eventually San Francisco. We may succeed. We may fail. At all times we will be somewhere, and that will be the right place to be. See you along the way, and thank you for supporting and following us.

[ridealabamboo]

Join us in Greensboro for an open house this weekend!

Team Alabamboo, Bamboo Bike Studio, HERO and Common Cycles would like to invite you to Greensboro for a two-day Open House on Sunday May 29 and Monday May 30 from 2 to 5pm each day.

Join us in Greensboro as we build up our bikes! Watch the bike-build process, learn about the Alabamboo initiative, meet the team, and enjoy a delicious slice of pie at PieLab. We'll also be barbecuing on Monday behind PieLab.

We'll be at the Common Cycles building on Main Street (it's the old Western Auto building across the street from PieLab). If you need more info, feel free to email us at [email protected]. If you aren't able to make it to Greensboro, follow our journey at our website, www.ridealabamboo.com. Thank you! See you there!

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Support Car Alabamboo Make & Ride

In June, four young adventurers will meet in the small town of Greensboro, Alabama for the Alabamboo Make & Ride, an epic journey across the United States.  Their first task?  Build the bikes they are going to ride....out of bamboo. Specifically, Alabamboo, the largest domestically available source of bamboo in the United States. Their second task is to ride the bikes from Greensboro to the West coast.  Their objective?  To increase awareness and create excitement around the potential of this amazing natural resource.  A sustainable resource that is bringing jobs, economic growth, and hope to one of the poorest areas of America.

How Your Support Will Make A Difference

Safety.  Riding a bicycle across the country is incredibly ambitious.  Your donation will allow the riders to have a support car so that they can focus on riding and the support car can help with logistics.

The story of Alabamboo is the story of bringing jobs to rural America.  Green, sustainable jobs. 

Karma.  Unlike other fundraising initiatives, Common Cycles has negotiated a deal with the Gods so that your donation guarantees you good vibes in the future.

Make your secure donation via PayPal by clicking on the widget below.  Thanks for donating and spreading the word!

Your donation will show up on PayPal as a donation to the Hale Empowerment and Revitalization Organization or HERO, the parent organization of this endeavor.