This bike is entirely made from ash wood including the seat and handlebars
It's not great for a 1000-meter climb on a switchback road.
Several times during my recent trip in Europe and Asia I switched my plans to avoid the places where the pandemic was currently worst. I was in Athens when I was supposed to be in Rome. It was a Sunday. The bike rental shops were closed. The only place I could rent a bike was at an upscale hotel that was connected to a local company that makes bikes from ash trees--fifty bikes per tree and then they plant fifty seedling trees for each tree they use. Here is their website.
The bikes are seven-speed, planetary hub city bikes. Three miles away from my hotel was a 1000-meter high mountain in the middle of the city with several cell towers at the top. It was 60 degrees, sunny and I wanted to ride! So I rented the wooden bike, raised the seat as high as I could and rode up the mountain.
At three miles up, the road got really steep and I had to walk a hundred meters, but then it leveled a little and I kept going. The view was beautiful. Halfway up I looked back at the city and was looking down on the Acropolis. Further up the road turned south and I was looking at the harbor and the Aegean Sea. Near the top the switchback interval got shorter and the grade went above ten percent. I gave up when I was looking at the base of the cell towers knowing I could get a steel bike with a triple crank the next day and ride to the top.
Along with its planetary gearset, the bike had a caliper brake on the front wheel, but a coaster brake in the rear. On the way down the mountain, riding into a couple of switchbacks I slid the rear wheel when I went to backpedal and braked instead. By the bottom I was used to it, but it made me realize that I backpedal on the way into sharp turns--some of the switchbacks were 180 degrees.
The road had few guardrails and many long, sheer drops. I thought if I had really screwed up with the coaster brake my epitaph could be: "He Wood Ride Anything with Wheels."
