What do you do for a living?
Manage Calfee Design, making carbon fiber bikes of all kinds. We also make bamboo bikes. I’m also starting up Bamboosero, a venture that teaches people in developing countries how to build bamboo bikes from their local bamboo. We’ll import them and offer them for sale here in the next couple of months. I make a lot of prototypes, design new products and travel a lot.
What would you be doing if you weren’t doing that?
I’d hire people to do what I’m currently doing and continue with the development work, making bamboo water towers, research natural fiber composites, find an alternative to epoxy, basically, more of the same, just at an accelerated pace.
What do you do in your free time?
Free time? What’s that? Actually, all my free time is spent playing with my kids.
What brought you to Santa Cruz?
My cousin needed help building her house in Ben Lomond. I was looking for a new location to re-launch my bike business. A few months in the area convinced me to move here.
What’s your favorite street?
Darkoman Street in Accra, Ghana is my current favorite with the loud African music, good food and vibrant street scene. Locally, the road going into Nisene Marks is hard to beat for sheer beauty and access to hiking trails.
Name something you’re excited about.
Starting to sell made-in-Africa bicycles to Americans as a way to stimulate economic development. The charity model doesn’t work (except in disasters) and it will be good to see people realize that being a customer is a great help. Look what it’s done for China!
Name a pet peeve.
Complainers who don’t make an effort to do something about it.
What are you reading?
I read on long flights. I’ve got two books on deck, The Wild Trees by Richard Preston and Beyond Capitalism and Socialism, a collection of essays.
What’s the most important thing you’ve learned in the last three years?
Preconceptions are worthless and one should base very little on them.
Recent personal food trend?
Stackhouse Bros. Hickory Smoke Almonds. Found at the Friday Watsonville Farmer’s Market.
