Meandering Bloggerings for January 31, 2007

Well, it's only four days until Stuporbowl X. Yup, it's this Saturday, February 3rd. There is a lot of stuff going on the whole weekend, and the real fun gets going on Friday night at CRC Coffee and Sundries. Check out http://www.stuporbowlmpls.com/ for the full poop. The weather forecast for this weekend is hella cold, so get ready, it's gonna be fun.

BIG DUMMY RELATED

The other day we received an email from a Surly Super Fan who just had an Instigator built up with a full XtraCycle FreeRad to replace the Queen Family Truckster in his garage. Pretty dang sweet. It's given me some ideas of how I want to equip my Big Dummy. His has two cool seats for the kidsto ride, which is great, but no seat for the wife? I guess this will be my challenge.

Check out the pix:

Thanks to Mark Kohr for sending us the pictures!

ARROWHEAD 135 On Monday of next week (2/5) is the start of the Arrowhead 135 race in International Falls, MN. Here is a blurb from their website (http://www.arrowheadultra.com/): "The Arrowhead Winter Ultra is a non-profit human powered ultramarathon on bike, foot or skis, covering 135 miles across the Arrowhead Region of Northern Minnesota from International Falls near the Canadian border to Tower, MN. The course follows a scenic, hilly, State multi-purpose trail under extreme winter conditions starting at 7am--Monday, February 5 through Wednesday night, 7pm--Feb. 7th, 2007". Our own Grayboy Brother Sunshine will compete for the second year in a row, as will some other QBP employees, and of course Miker from Salsa has been blogging a ton on his prep for the race. Last year Grayboy finished in second place. The predicted temp at the start of the race is around -20 degrees farvegnugget, not including wind chill. Good luck Dave, Miker, and all else who compete.

People in cold climates do weird things to survive the winter. Take for instance the Minnesota fishermen who don't let 14 inches (36cm) of ice on a frozen lake keep them from pulling lunkers up through an 8" hole. Some might say all ice fishermen do is sit around and get drunk. Well, we did our fair share of that last weekend, but we also brought my old Rat Ride 1x1 with studded tires, just for a little change of pace from the jig-n-swig.



After a two-hour drive up north, we drove straight onto the ice of Lake Mille Lacs 1.5 miles (2.4km) out from shore. For any warm climate folks out there, yes, you really can drive your car on a frozen lake. We dropped our stuff in the pre-warmed fish house, cracked a beer and dropped our lines in the pre-drilled holes.

It was a premo day, probably 20F (-7C) degrees and sunny. The grillmaster was cooking us something from all four meat groups. The ice was solid, but there were pressure ridges that create open water when the ice expands and cracks. I took a video while riding the Rat Ride and if you look closely, you'll see the crack with open water I rode across three times. Sketchy, but cool.



This party of grumpy old men only caught three perch and two eelpout, I contributed zero. Did I care? Hell no. I was outside with a bunch of my good buddies and all I had to worry about for the next 24 hours was not dropping my beer down the hole.



Brauer Power shows just how hard icefishing can be.

Here’s some Dummy on Dummy action for your enjoyment.






The second batch of samples arrived last week, so we’re all working hard to get them assembled and real-world-tested. I prefer to build my bikes at home instead of working in the Surly shop, because it’s less distracting and most of my parts are sitting somewhere in my dungeonous basement shop. So I mounted the new frame onto old #1 for transport. I’ve found that a Dummy frame travels best when it’s held onto an Xtracycle or Big Dummy bike using an Xtracycle Wideloader bar inserted through horizontal tubes of both frames…as shown.

We’re getting closer to production. We’ve got a short list of small changes to make at this point. At least one more sample must be produced and approved before we can place the Big Dummy purchase order. This is pretty typical of the pre-production development process. There are generally too many variables (tube spec, geometry, braze-on placement, etc) to design it perfectly in one shot.

I chose red for my sample frameset. But we haven't chosen the production color, yet.

Hey, Telly Savalas, like you told me once: "You can't corrupt it. And you know why? Because to corrupt it, you've got to show how corrupt you really are." I dig your style, man, but I got to know when you gonna show us how corrupt you are. Who loves ya baby?

Patience my good people, patience.

The answer to your question is "March or April." That's when a majority of our new stuff is coming in.

That stuff is: the new frame colors on the appropriate models (see the frame pages for the new colors) and the two new complete bikes: the Long Haul Trucker and the Steamroller. New pages are up here (now with pictures and spec):

New Completes

The two things that will not be in at that time are the Big Dummy Xtracycle frame and the Mr. Whirly cranks. Those are still slated for Summer release.

I know, I know, that's a long time to wait. Well, we waited a long time (in the evolutionarly or geologic sense) for donuts, and look how good that turned out.

Thanks,
Skip

We still have some of these real purdy limited edition hubs in stock.

HU1620 - Single speed disc F&R set (135mm rear)
HU1621 - SS disc rear only
HU1622 - Fixie F&R set (120mm rear. Fixie threads one side, SS threads other side)

Get 'em. Got 'em? Good.

Happy New Year From Surly!

First of all I just want to say I hate New Year’s Eve. It’s one of those nights that promises so much but delivers so very little. At least this is the way it has been for me. I know a lot of people consider it the biggest party of the year but for me all the hoopla and expectation just cause me stress, so my favorite way to spend the holiday is in a very quiet fashion, hanging out with my family , enjoying some good food, good drink, and relaxation of sorts.

This New Year’s eve we got some snow here in Minneapolis. I’m not sayin’ it was our first snow of the year, but it sure felt like it, because we haven’t had much yet. My son and I decided we were gonna go out for a midnight ride in the snow. My wife thought we were nuts, which for me made all the more worthwhile. My son, Senna, is only 6 years old, so I wasn’t about to take him out on the streets at midnight with no lights on our bikes and a lot of drunks on the road, so we headed for the paved paths of a nearby park. The paths were covered in about an inch of slushy snow, and there were occasional puddles to splash though and also some slick spots where the snow covered ice underneath. Neither of us went down but Senna almost did a few times, which made him enjoy it even more. We had so much fun that we did it again last night, but this time there was a full moon and not a bit of wind. The slushy snow had now frozen and become a hard crust that was bumpy and a little sketchy to ride on.

When I lived in Japan I had one of the best New Year’s eves ever. My wife and I took the train into Tokyo to spend the afternoon, with plans to have dinner and drinks in the evening. After shopping and walking around Tokyo we decided to grab some food when it got to be around 9:00 pm. The only problem was there was nothing open. We had never spent this holiday in Tokyo before so it took us completely by surprise. After searching for a long time in the Ginza area we finally found one pub that was open, and since it was the only action in town it was also totally packed. The hostess found us two seats at the bar, or else we would have had to wait about two hours for a table. After several rounds of drinks and great pub food we found ourselves back on the Tokyo streets with nowhere to go and not a care in the world. We just started walking. We walked around the Imperial Palace, down toward Roppongi, and finally ended up at Tokyo Tower where numerous folks were lined up to take the elevator to the top to view the first sunrise of the year (a Japanese tradition). For this reason we couldn’t go up in the tower, so we just kept on walking. The beautiful thing about the walk was that there was hardly a soul around. During New Year’s Tokyo becomes a ghost town, so we could walk for 15 minutes at a time without seeing another person, and hardly any cars were on the roads so it was very quiet and peaceful. It was one of those nights where you hope it never ends.

Golly I love New Year’s Eve. It’s just about the greatest day of the year.

Resolutions? Bahahaha!!!

Surly had a great year in 2006, and we thank all of you who made it so special. Looking forward to an even better 2007.