The bamboo bomber from the basement

“Then even the Nibelungen Bridge becomes a mountain pass,” he jokes, but the passionate biker resorted to self-help and built a lighter version out of bamboo in a friend’s basement. “For the loading area, I followed the Euro standard, i.e. there is space for a collapsible box or a beer crate in width,” says Steinberg: The bike is quite long, but flexible and narrow enough for every gap. The bamboo tubes came from a shop in Tulln, the connections were wrapped with carbon tape and laminated with lots of epoxy.

“If it breaks, please do it right away,” Steinberg thought to himself on the first ride, but the bike is still holding up today. Steinberg had to resort to leftovers from the bicycle cellar for the attachments: the bottom bracket is from an old steel wheel, the dropouts are also from old bikes that have served their purpose, only the fork was reordered. The gears are Shimano from a discarded mountain bike with 9-speed gearing, and the “bamboo bomber” even has disc brakes at the back. “It was much easier to drive with only 23 kilos, but unfortunately there was no electric drive at the time,” reports Steinberg: The retrofit kits seven years ago were expensive and would not have fitted the 20-inch front wheel. Steinberg installed a 26-inch MTB wheel at the rear, then covered the frame with a layer of boat paint. “Water or road salt cannot harm the bike, it has held up perfectly to this day,” says the tinkerer happily.

In any case, it’s never boring on the trips: “There’s a topic of conversation at every intersection, many ask whether it’s just a paint job or whether it’s really bamboo underneath,” says Steinberg. The bike has also proven itself on a camping trip, the loading area offers enough space for the equipment. How long did he work on it? “A whole winter,” says Steinberg – he didn’t write it down exactly, but there were a lot of evenings and weekends.