The Bamboo Bike by Donnaldson Brown

Almost four years ago now, Mike and Lyle spent a long summer weekend together, father and son, making a bamboo bike frame in Red Hook. Long hot days, cutting and measuring and gluing. Epoxy sealant and carbon fiber tape. A hipster Brooklyn venture: workshops for those with means to build bike frames with a material that could be harvested in the forests of Cambodia, the Sudan or Cameroon, to get the money to go to Cambodia and the Sudan and Cameroon and build bikes there for people to bike the five miles for water or staples, instead of walking. For almost four years that bamboo frame sat on the cement floor of our Brooklyn basement, balanced on its bottom bracket, waiting for parts. Another of Mike’s unfinished projects. Like cobbler’s children, this master carpenter’s house with doors that don’t lock, walls without molding, dangling lights. Now, though, he finishes everything he starts. Like a compulsion. The living room crown molding: joined and painted. Butcher-block countertops: sanded and oiled. The basement storage room: taped and sanded, door hung. The bamboo bike assembled: chain, brakes, fork, pedals and tires. And I rode it down President Street on a warm spring day, pollen dusting the street, cars and brownstone bannisters. And it rode beautifully. The bamboo bike that Mike finished. And he looked proud. Happy to give this to me. The things he can still do. The small ways for us to be together now. And I happy to appreciate him. To accept who he is. To not want or expect or try any longer to change him. Or save him.Almost four years ago now, Mike and Lyle spent a long summer weekend together, father and son, making a bamboo bike frame in Red Hook. Long hot days, cutting and measuring and gluing. Epoxy sealant and carbon fiber tape. A hipster Brooklyn venture: workshops for those with means to build bike frames with a material that could be harvested in the forests of Cambodia, the Sudan or Cameroon, to get the money to go to Cambodia and the Sudan and Cameroon and build bikes there for people to bike the five miles for water or staples, instead of walking. For almost four years that bamboo frame sat on the cement floor of our Brooklyn basement, balanced on its bottom bracket, waiting for parts. Another of Mike’s unfinished projects. Like cobbler’s children, this master carpenter’s house with doors that don’t lock, walls without molding, dangling lights. Now, though, he finishes everything he starts. Like a compulsion. The living room crown molding: joined and painted. Butcher-block countertops: sanded and oiled. The basement storage room: taped and sanded, door hung. The bamboo bike assembled: chain, brakes, fork, pedals and tires. And I rode it down President Street on a warm spring day, pollen dusting the street, cars and brownstone bannisters. And it rode beautifully. The bamboo bike that Mike finished. And he looked proud. Happy to give this to me. The things he can still do. The small ways for us to be together now. And I happy to appreciate him. To accept who he is. To not want or expect or try any longer to change him. Or save him.