Big Dummy Report

First of all, no, the Big Dummy is not yet in production. We have all been asked when they will be ready, on a daily basis, over the past six months, but the best answer any of us can give you is, "when they're ready." Why? Because at Surly, we do not believe in selling you products that will require you to work out any issues that we were too lazy to work out ourselves. Not only would that be a disservice to you, it would send the message that we don't really care about the products, but are instead focused only on how many units we can sell. If you know anything about Surly you know that this is not the way we operate, ever.

I'll share with you a conversation I had with a product manager of another bike company not too long ago. It went something like this:

Me: "Hey, that bike looks really cool. The chainstays look long, though. How long are they?"

That Guy: "A little over 18 inches."

Me: "How does it climb?"

That Guy: "Not sure. We just received this frame a couple of days ago, and we haven't ridden it yet."

That Guy's Product Developer (overhearing our conversation): "Actually, our distributor should be receiving their shipment of these in about two weeks."

If the sound of my jaw dropping were audible, you all would have heard an awesome sound. I was literally doing all I could to not scream. But, it made me aware of the fact that not all bicycle companies care to, or are able to operate that way we at Surly do. In the end you might have to wait a little longer for our products to be released than you'd like, but you can rest assured that when our products do make it into one of our fine dealer's shops, they will be as close to possible to perfect as we can make them.

Anyway, now that the weather has gotten nice I've had more time to mess around with my Big Dummy prototype. This is good, because as a result of spending more time on the bike I have gone from treating it as just another interesting bike in my garage to a bike that gets daily use.

I started out looking for ways to haul lots of stuff on this bike, using it to run to the supermarket or liquor store, Home Depot, etc. It worked well for this, mostly. Some exceptions were trying to pack soft things like bread, crushable things like eggs and chips, with heavier things like milk, juice and beer. I was left wanting an alternative to the Xtracycle bag system on some occasions, but in the end I got everything home in reasonably good shape.

As for daily use, what I use it for most is to take my son Senna and his baseball equipment to the local park to practice for the upcoming Little League Baseball season. For this it works great, as we haul three bats, a dozen baseballs, two gloves, a batting helmet, some bottles of water, and Senna riding on the back. I rigged up a stem and handlebar to make it safer for him to ride on the snap deck. At first I put on a Race Face stem and a riser bar, which worked fine for the ride, but was too wide to park it in my garage. So, I replaced the handlebar with a Nitto sweep style cruiser bar (Nitto's model number B617AA), which measures 450mm wide). This bar works perfectly, as it is considerably narrower than the riser bar I'm using on the front, making it easy to store against the wall of my garage. It also allows him more than one riding position for longer rides. Now I need to figure out a way to attach a cushion seat for him, even though he says it's comfortable sitting on the snap deck. I also want to attach a child carrier so I can take my daughter Audrey along for the ride sometimes. I'm afraid that by the time I figure something out that suits our needs she will have outgrown the child seat. Sigh...

As you can see, I'm trying to use the Dummy for every day use, both as a replacement for short trips in the car and as a source of fun. When I first started riding the bike I was unhappy with how sluggish it felt, but figured that it was simply the added weight of the bike, the long rear stays, and my lack of riding condition. In fact, it was probably a bit of all those things, but one thing I decided to try was airing up the tires as hard as they would safely go, and in the end I settled on 70-75 psi, even though the upper end of the tire rating says 65 psi. This reduced the sluggish feeeling dramatically, and the last ride I took it on (about 10 miles) was a blast, and left me wanting to ride it much more, so this is a good sign. The tires I am using are Maxxis Holy Roller 2.4". These feel pretty soft on pavement, so in the future I will experiment with a tire that has a slicker surface and can handle higher pressures. Squishy tires are not ideal for a bike this big, especially when it's loaded, but I chose the 2.4" tires because I figured they would be safer and more comfortable than a skinnier tire. The Schwalbe Marathon Supreme 2.0" looks like a cool possibility.

I'm gonna keep trying other configurations with this rig, hopefully to discover new types of cycling and learn some things along the way, but mostly because this bike is just plain fun. The design changes that are in process now, and that have been explained in detail in Grayboy's blog postings, will make the Dummy even better. We know you can't wait to get your hands on one, but we appreciate that you are willing to anyway.