Interbike "B" Sample, Epilogue

Ridin' down the highway
Goin' to a show
Stop in all the byways
Playin' rock 'n' roll
Gettin' robbed
Gettin' stoned
Gettin' beat up
Broken boned
Gettin' had
Gettin' took
I tell you folks
It's harder than it looks
It's a long way to the top if you wanna rock 'n' roll
-AC/DC

Each year the show is exactly the same as every other, except for all the details. It starts with dread and ends with exhaustion, but in the middle you get to see people with whom you feel kinship and things that satisfy your inner (and outer) bike-geek.
We walked home from dinner one night. Blake suggested it and it was a great idea. Get some excercise...actual excercise, not just walking in crowds, standing in lines, or whiskey sour arm curls...and see the seamy and gritty (and substantially boring) underbelly of the Armpit of The High Desert. It was confusing in a way, as the walk felt great, but LV is not a good city for walking, as most streets are at least four lanes wide and everybody drives like a cabbie. And there's no shortage of actual cabbies, the LV version of bicycle messengers, doing battle on the streets every day with a hardness born of necessity-turned-impatience that makes veteran pros terrifying drivers, and in whose hands you are cradled safely but not delicately. Walking is an antidote for the otherworldly car-ness, but it comes with some cautionary realities. Gotta watch yourself at intersections. And the sidewalks -and there are sidewalks- are narrow and just sort of stop every once in a while, usually due to construction. And LV is a dirty city from top to bottom, so the sidewalks are gray and occasionally sticky.
Random highlights from the week include but are not limited to:

Soundtrack: Found in the CD player of the Town&Country&Western rental when we picked it up was "Kyle's Music Mix, Volume 1", portions of which helped us to rock, and other parts of which had to be skipped due their extreme lame-itude. Loverboy? Kyle, Kyle, Kyle. You'll get there buddy, whoever you are.

Action: LL TeeJ got hisself tossed, Cap'n Jon got hisself cash-broke, Rubena tires knew their tequila, & Dave's still-healing leg was so packed with fluid after 4 days that you could press your finger into it and the dent stayed. Freaky. Hurl was crippled, Cheever was mellow, and the mood seemed generally reversed from the usual. Can't really explain that. Holt is a rock star but the D.D. Saloon seemed... different. Overrun by people trying too hard to be drunk.

Lesson: The feeling remains even after the glitter fades.

Where the eagle glides ascending
There's an ancient river bending
Through the timeless gorge of changes
Where sleeplessness awaits
I searched out my companions,
Who were lost in crystal canyons
When the aimless blade of science
Slashed the pearly gates.
It was then I knew I'd had enough,
Burned my credit card for fuel
Headed out to where the pavement turns to sand
With a one-way ticket to the land of truth
And my suitcase in my hand
How I lost my friends I still don't understand.
-Neil Young, "Thrasher"

Fear And Loathing In Las Vagueass


Well here we are and where are you?
Busy as hell at Interbike 06. What could it be? Random chance? High gas prices? Who knows. Dirt Demo was the usual thing. Dr. Nick calls the air 'tartar control' because of the dust, and damn if the dust isn't still better than the smog in LV.
First hour of the first day of the show proper was like the start of the Kentucky Derby. Small people were trampeled. It was great.
Seems so far no one besides me has seen all the f*cking bats flying around. They'll see them soon enough. My lawyer, BRose, advised me to drink more, which would almost be "at all" at this point. Wise advise from one who knows.
Funny thing is that if you're reading this there's a good chance you're not here, and if you're here and still reading this you're likely a nerd. In either case I am not willing to describe the new 'product.' Look elsewhere on the interweb for that. Bikehugger.com for example. Hint.
O.K., that's enough. I'm off the rails a bit. Long days, Vegas, and an all too surreal diarist as normal course will amplify the Dali/Dada-esque, through-the-bottom-of-the-beer-glass thing that is Interbike.
Tomorrow: Hangover, The Sequel.

Like Snackey just said, we'll have a new project (actually two projects) to unveil at Interbike next week in Las Vegas. The anticipation to pull back the curtain is killing me, because like all Surly products, we make them because we like them. For some reason, we think you will too. I'm sure a fair amount of people simply won't get it and will tell us "that's dumb". That's fine, as long as you still ride a bike, wé still like you.

So if you're trying to get ahold of any of us next week via phones or e-mail, we're all here in Vegas and won't be available. Leave a message, wait a week and then we'll get back to you as promptly as possible.

Over and out from the town that invented the word excess.

Several friends, family and beings from other worlds (ZEKE) have approached me, emailed me, sent telegrams, death threats, love letters, and ransom notes to ask me what is the new “thing” Surly is introducing at Interbike.

First, let me say that just because I am the newest and most vulnerable (not to mention the cutest) one around here, doesn’t mean that I’m gonna spill.

I will tell you this much, though. Our new project almost didn’t make it here in time for Interbike. In fact, the prototype didn’t show up at the Surlyville garage door until 8:36 a.m. Wednesday of this week. Our trucks for Interbike were leaving at 11:00 a.m. on this same Wednesday, and we thought the DHL man wasn’t gonna show up until about then, so we were sweating it.

The second it showed up we pulled down the blinds, fired up the blow torches, and Andy set the dials on the Surly Central Processing Command Center computer masterboard to eleven. The lights in Surlyville dimmed a few times before the record player started up automatically and the room was filled with the sounds of David Hasslehoff. I looked over at Dave and he was dressed in full kimono and his face was made up like a maiko. Sov was dressed as a wizard and kep’t uttering something sounding like “…must.. protect…the…ring…” Swervy’s body was the same as usual but his head had been replaced with Rosie O’Donnell’s, and Andy, well… Andy… yeah… Let’s just say Andy is one of the other “special” new things we’re gonna be showing at Interbike. It’s just too precious to spoil the surprise. Kinda brings tears to my eyes just thinkin’ about it.

Without giving anything more away, you should know that we had a crack staff of Nascar pit wrenches on hand to take over and shake this muther out just in a nick of time so that it made it on the truck. We had to send one of our special agents along so that he/she could accompany it (handcuffed to the thing, nonetheless) on its way to the windy city (bet you didn’t know this is Las Vegas’ nickname, didya?). Bottom line is, we will have one of the coolest things at Interbike this year.

If you want to see what we came up with you’ll need to stop by our booth next week. We can’t wait to meet ya.

Two great tastes that taste great together.



There was still beer in the keg when the All City Championship Alley Cat post-race gathering, in back of One On One Bike Studio, was shut down by the fuzz on Saturday night. It was decided that the party should move on down the road a piece. My rig…the FreeRad Instigator Stokemonkey Hack…the FISH…was best suited for keg-moving detail, so the keg was loaded onto the sidehack, with the tap still on, and lashed down with ¼” nylon rope and parachute cord. ROPE ROCKS! I always carry rope. Bungies generally suck for holding down any cargo of considerable size or mass. Rope will help make a shelter, a belt, a splint for bike or body, or a pack strap. Get some.

I rolled, with a group of 7 or 8, to a familiar firepit along the tracks outside of downtown Minneapolis. The FISH loves ballast. It helps to keep the outrigger wheel on the ground when turning corners. Considering the nature of the load, my rig was pretty darned stable. I don’t know how much beer was in the keg, but I’d estimate it added an additional 40kg to my ride. I used the Stokemonkey motor assist to get up to speed and let the inertia of the beer/FISH/jockey to move me along smoothly down the streets and bike paths. I used the motor to power up the corkscrew ramp to the bridge. And, while walking on the left side of the FISH, I used the motor to crawl over rocks that threatened progress toward the fire pit. When we reached the pit area, the keg just stayed on the hack. It was at a good height for pouring a beer.

Within minutes, Swervy got his mobile tune system set up and rockin’. One of the pyromaniacs got a sweet fire blazing, and dozens of cyclists on all types of bikes rolled in to keep the party going until the wee hours. Nobody realized that a storm, 40km northwest of us, was knocking down houses and tearing apart beige neighborhoods. We only knew that it was a great night to be drinking Surly beer in the woods by a fire with fellow bike geeks. Blissful ignorance.

49cm Steamrollers should be back in stock by Monday, FYI.

Singlespeed Spacer kits should also be back in stock very soon.

That's all folks.

7km into my commute to work, I heard and felt a “thump” coming from the back wheel of my Xtracycle. I pulled over to find a heavily-damaged tire.

I had a Mr. Tuffy tire liner installed. So I figured I’d proceed, hoping the tire and tube would stay intact until I reached my destination. Other than the subtle mental torture of riding with a messed up rig that was destined to fail at any time, I rolled along for another 13km without difficulty. Then I heard the psss…psss…psss…of a tire that was soon to be flat. I got another km, to the halfway point of the big hill going up Poplar Bridge Road, before the tire was completely flat. I pulled over onto the sidewalk to boot the tire and replace the tube.

I’m able to hobble a bit on my broken leg, now. But I still tote the crutches around in case I need to take some weight off the bum leg when it gets sore. Well, I realized those crutches would prop up a gimp’s bike as well as the gimp himself. So I got the bike up on the front wheel and the outrigger wheel, crutched the left rear corner, and pulled the rear wheel out to work on the tire and tube. Two layers of duct tape and the Mr. Tuffy kept the tube from creeping out of the gaping hole in my tire as I pumped it up. It looked sketchy, but I figured I had nothing to lose at that point. I had 5km to go. In the worst-case scenario, if the tube blew out and the tire self-destructed beyond repair, I’d call for one of my co-workers to ride or drive to meet me with a tire and tube from the shop.

I installed the wheel, strapped the crutches back on, and continued on to the office. My tire boot worked fine. I bought a Michelin Transworld 26 x 1.95 tire to replace the 7-year-old Cheng Shin cheapy that finally gave out this morning. I’ll ride it home tonight. There's potential for it to wallow around corners due to the deep longitudinal sipes. But it's a cheap tire, and I won't feel bad if I need to replace it with another model.

I’m diggin’ the Stokemonkey sidehack. I’ve learned how to corner faster and get more speed and range out of the system. This weekend, I added a platform and sturdy battery mount to the rig, and I tightened up the sidehack-to-FreeRad interface. It’s getting quieter and more functional all the time. A minimalist fairing and aero tailbox are next. I’m not kidding. At the speed I’m moving, aerodynamic effects come into play. It’s worth trying. I already look like a pedaling sideshow. Why not take it a step further?

24 Hours of OH MY GOD!

That's POWERful.

Things are Happening

Things have been real busy around the Surly Ranch and Home for Wayward Injured Folks lately. Dave's chicken ankle (see below) keeps him hobbling around and generally in the way and now our boy Blake seems to have broken his head.

Blake works over on the "other side of the room" pouring over technical drawings and playing with calipers, but that's just his Clark Kent persona. On the weekends he's super long-distance mountain bike racer guy. This part of his life has recently ended up in a helicopter ride and some sweet head staples.

Seems Blake wiped out and bashed his melon on something real hard out in Utah last weeked. Put' near took him out, but some other racer-geeks came to his rescue and got him the help he needed (well, not ALL the help, but the help with that particular injury.)

So here are a couple of shots of FrankenMelon.



Note the HO scale model railroad that begins at his forehead, drops off some logs and grain at his occipital lobe, and finaly disembarks at his ear.



Check out the dent (now occupied by titanium plates). Awesome!

Blake is ok. He also broke some other bits - notably his scapula and collarbone and his hip, but like the Superman we know him to be, he's walking, back at work, and salty as ever. Blake would like to thank the racers who helped him out, the helicopter pilot, the nurses and doctors, his ladyfriend, and especially his freaky vegan lifestyle. All them veggies broke his fall and surround his brainsac with a cushioning layer of cellulose.

In other news:

The Adventures for the Cure guys are done with their ride across the United States raising money for Kupenda and for Diabetes research. Again, to reiterate, these guys are tougher than you. They rode across the US on fixed gear Steamrollers. And they didn't go straight across like you would have, they took the long route logging over 6500 miles. Damn. Congratulations guys!

In still other news:

The 2006 Mpls-St.Paul ALL CITY CHAMPIONSHIP Alley Cat is coming up on Saturday, September 16th. Check out Bikejerks for more information. And word to Admiral Pickles and his crue for setting this thing up. We at Surly are always happy when folks get bike events going in our fair cities. These guys are both dope and fly, so you should get there. 4pm sign up at One On One.

More news yet:

For those of you in the self-flagellation set, it's almost Cyclocross season and we have a pain fest for you to attend put on by our good friends over at The Hub Bike Co-op. Their big to-do race is set for Sunday, October 22 at beautiful urban Powderhorn Park in Minneapolis. Last year was great, this year will be great. It's great. Stay tuned for more info.

Lastly:

The 2006 Homey Fall Fest will once again be held at the Hobo Camp. This year we'll be doing the deal on Saturday, October 21. All are welcome, most bikes will do just fine. Stay tuned.

It has been a long 3+ weeks since I hobbled myself on my longboard. I still have a removable cast and use crutches 95% of the time I'm walking or standing. I hope to get a walking cast soon…maybe today. I have an appointment with my surgeon at 2:00.

For the last 8 years, I’ve commuted solely by bicycle to my office…approximately 25km from my house. My cycling commute is something I really value, and not being able to ride has been grating on me. I feel like a caged animal, sometimes. For the last 2 weeks, I’ve relied on the metro bus and my co-workers for transportation to and from my workplace. Well, yesterday was a new beginning for me. I was finally able to ride into work again.

My doctor’s concerns about me riding a bike are based on the possibilities of having to put my injured leg down hard in a panic stop or crash situation and injuring it again…basically undoing his handiwork. I share those concerns; I want to heal properly and quickly. He has no problem with me riding a trike or quadracycle, because the balance element is taken out of the equation and there is less chance of having to put a foot down at all during the ride. Some type of motor assist would be necessary, because it’s still too early to use my broken leg for much propulsion. I researched trikes and quads and didn’t like most of the offerings I found. Most are too heavy, too crude, or too expensive for my taste. I thought about building my own electric-assist trike or quad but realized it would take me at least a month to do so if I devoted all of my spare time to the project. I couldn’t wait that long. So, I came up with a somewhat uncommon solution.








Besides the fact that my Xtracycle easily carries my crutches and provides a very stable and comfortable ride, the design of the Xtracycle allows me to plug in different components to suit my cargo needs. I took advantage of this feature and designed a sidehack to plug into the tubes that usually house Wideloader bars. I built my outrigger from cro-moly fork steerer tubes (from defective Surly forks) and thick-wall straight-gauge cro-moly tubing that I had acquired for another project that never got started. The minimalist design required little cutting and brazing time relative to the fabrication time needed to build a trike or quad from scratch. The wheel, a front FUNN 20mm thru-axle hub laced to a 20" Alex DM 24 rim, rides on a stub axle and is held on by a quick release skewer. My design allows adjustment of wheel toe-in and bike lean angle, relative to the ground. The sidehack naturally wants to pull the bike toward the side of the road, so a bit of sidehack wheel toe-in and bike lean counteract this force, as well as the pull from a crowned road, and allow the bike to track straight.

A while ago, Todd Fahrner sent one of his Stokemonkeys for us to test on our Xtracycles. Skip and Swervy had already given the Stokemonkey a flogging, and it was my turn to install it on my Instigator Xtracycle. The Stokemonkey addresses my worries of not being able to pedal up some of the hills using only one good leg. I lost the Stokemonkey chain a few times, at first. But once I got the chainline dialed in, the Stokemonkey worked very well. I was glad I installed it.

Riding a bike with a sidehack/outrigger/sidecar is a whole new experience. The first right-hand turn is a bit unnerving. One's instinct is to keep all wheels on the ground at all costs. This caused me to swing wide and swerve into the lane of oncoming traffic. I soon found it much easier to navigate right turns, at speed, on two wheels. More weight on the sidehack will aid in keeping the outrigger wheel on the ground. On my ride to the office, I put the Stokemonkey battery near the wheel, as the picture shows, to keep the wheel grounded as much as possible. On my ride home, I lashed my heavily-loaded messenger bag to the battery in order to further aid in keeping the sidehack wheel on the ground when navigating right turns at speed. This helped, but more weight is needed to insure that the small wheel stays grounded at all times. The suggested weight distribution percentages (taken from motorcycle sidecar websites) for sidecar vehicles are roughly 40% front...40% rear...20% sidecar. These percentages include the weight of the riders. The weight on my sidehack wheel is probably 5-10% of the overall vehicle weight, and there's little I can do to change this, unless I want to carry around extra weight for ballast. I'm not going to that. But I'm anxious to install a seat on the sidehack for my son to ride on. He would add 20kg to the outrigger weight and may add enough mass to keep the outer wheel grounded at speed. A brake on the outrigger wheel, applied independently of the bike brakes, would help to turn the corner at speed...as long as the wheel stays on the ground. I can add a disk brake mount to the stub axle, but I probably won't. I noticed that applying electric power to the rear wheel, when negotiating a right turn, helped to decrease my turning radius. What about left turns? Pretty easy, comparatively. Not as easy as riding a bike, of course, but not too bad.

I'm still getting used to the width of my new contraption. The track (width from rear wheel to outrigger wheel) is about 91cm (36"). 36cm (12") is added to the left side in the form of a handle bar. That makes a pretty wide rig. I navigated a couple of bike paths to and from the office, but I feel better on the road because I have more room. It's no problem to take the lane when one has such a wide ride.

My commute time was on par with my usual ride time on the same bike without the motor or sidehack but with two good legs. I lose time in the corners, but gain it on the straights. The Stokemonkey will push me at 32kph (about 20mph) on the flats. I can live with that.

For some reason, on my ride home, my left-side pedal threads (the side of my good leg) started to strip out when I was about 5km from home. I knew it was beyond repair and I couldn't do anything to tighten up the thread interface, so I pedaled softly and utilized the motor-assist as much as possible. The pedal finally parted from the crank arm about 2km from home. Luckily, I still had enough juice in the battery to get me home. The sight of me riding the monstrosity with my left leg resting behind me on the FreeRad (to keep it out of the way of the spinning crank...sans pedal) and my right leg in a knee-high black plastic cast lightly pedaling while the motor pushed me along at 25kph, provoked some puzzled and concerned looks from the coffin jockeys driving around me. It's good to be the unknown quantity. I think it generally affords me a little more room on the road.

My rig has some inherent handling flaws. It will never be perfect. But it still beats the hell out of taking the bus or riding in a car. I've regained some of my freedom, and that is priceless.