MaLora Ann, of Seattle, WA, "creator, designer, and lucky girl for the Lovely Ladies on Beautiful Bikes Calendar," wrote wondering if I'd be interested in posting something about them on this here blog. Oh sure. Why not? Although I am suspicious of sales points like "Hot chicks on Surly bikes is good for everyone," still I like girls and bikes and girls who like to ride bikes and of course calendars, and with the added No Pressure! line from her email, I went into that dark internet and checked out their deal, by which I mean their website.
Still, nothing with me is simple (as I am sure any number of people who know me will attest). The stinger came as a comment from a visitor on their myspace page who thanks them for "bringing sexy back to cycling." I am not calling into question The Calendar Girls' sexiness --they appear to be pretty girls who like to smile for the camera and who love to ride bikes; no fault there-- but the comment flustered me into a knot of existential angst over the subject of sexiness in cycling. Exhibit A: Was sexiness actually missing from cycling in the first place or does this suck up just want to get lucky? Exhibit B: Lycra is not and should never be considered accoutremont to one's sexiness. Perhaps you have the bod to pull it off, but the best looking person in lycra is still a far cry from actually looking good. Lycra can, will, and does take any imperfection and amplifies it to screaming insult for the world to see. If this guy is balancing on one hand the hermetically sealed but lycra free raciness of the calendar girls against 25+ years of cartoon embossed lycra cycling "fashion," some middle ground has obviously been missed (not to mention extremes beyond middle). Exhibit C: Was there a need for sexiness in cycling? Not only has the Sex Sells mantra been so liberally applied to all manner of marketing that it may be considered without hyperbole Ubiquitous, but as well the American predeliction toward sexual uncomfortableness means that almost any image which even hints at sex is enough to send us into spasms of excited, skulking peeping tommery. In a culture where Following The Joneses equates to staying on top of the latest fashion, the fundamental question lost is Who sets the standard for what is or is not fashionable? Not to mention sexy. Exhibit D (and I reach this point with no small amount of self loathing and ironic shame for allowing myself the level of self indulgence it takes not only to think about such arcane and unimportant a topic but to write about it at length on, of all media, a blog): Why do I care at all? It isn't like I'm setting any fashion standards, let alone pushing the envelope of sexiness, nor (as evidenced by my spectacular beer gut) do I care to. But like that portion of the body on which the sun seldom shines, everybody's got an opinion. And some of us have big digital soapboxes on which to puff up and try to be important. And isn't that what's really important here? Although I am no longer sure what point I'm trying to make, or if I was ever trying to make a point at all, I defend myself by recalling the sage words of my uncle David: "All free cats are pregnant."

I'll swallow my angst now, shut my typing mouth and continue carreening down that dark and winding road by myself. I mean, who am I to rain on their parade? These girls like to cheesecake a little gam for the camera. Buy one of their calendars and you get a nifty thing to hang on your shop wall, and if you're in Seattle you get to know a few of the people you may see around on bikes. So I'll leave this topic with just the facts, ma'am. The release party for their 2nd annual calendar is November 1. Everything you need to know is on the flier. The rest is sound and fury, signifying nothing.



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I don't know why I find this interesting, but I want one, so go yurt yourself.

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Lastly, this is a little gem of a time waster. A bit of history, some entertainment. And it does make me think "Man that is hot. I want that style."

I've never in my life encountered a more succinct and perfect account of the Homey Fall Festival.

Quoth Hollywood (west):

"Short Version:
LAX, Red Eye, CRC Cafe, Heineken, grease, cappuccino, Hurl's couch, Kelly Mac's, One on One, MGD, bikes, GeneO, cock, (not in that order), pizza, Jaeger, fire, Grumpy's, PBR, Liquor Lyle's, Bloody Marys, Tater Tots, #120, Hurl's kilt, Surly, foot meets SUV, derbies, carnage, 36", Bud, bud, singlespeeds, marriage, hummus, duck, belly lint, Feats of Strength, Squirrel, Emily, blood, paramedics, mushrooms, beer, fire, smokes, leaves, stuffed peppers, bacon donuts, venison, fireworks, Hurl's balls, music in the woods,'wood in the woods, lost in the woods, Hollywood, Simon says "like riding on a cloud", Zeke, Mayor, Swobo, Troy's toe, Elena, jerky, beer, B double-E double-R U-N, firecrackers, bikes, Richter, 'cross, cowbells, trains, planes, automobiles, LAX, bewilderment, confusion."

Read the long version here:

-Skip

Another one in the history books.
Thanks to everyone who came and made it a spectacular 10th year.
I have nothing to add that hasn't been said already. More than once. Except to cap this post with Donut Procurement Officer Kerl's Homie report, which I think she may have plagerized from Francis Scott Key:

"Oh Homie: spicy wine, pokey sticks, charred duck meat freshly shot, bloody knees, and walloping boulders I salute you. "

I think I hear taps playing softly in the background.

Now get back to work.


p/s/ H. Wood Thrasher: Drop me a line.

I went camping after work, last Thursday, to get away from people for a spell and test out some new gear I’ve acquired over the summer.

My campsite is a 10-minute walk from the office. That may seem too close for comfort, but it’s a stealth location if I go in after dark…so hidden I couldn’t find it after I walked away from it Thursday night.

I left the office around 8pm, on foot, with my gear packed in a Golite Jam2 backpack. The brush is too thick to get into my campsite with a bike, so I left it behind. I packed light-ultralight…less than a 6kg baseload including my 1kg homemade woodburning heating/cooking stove shown below....







I built the stove out of 30cm x 130cm stainless steel shim stock (chimney), 4 stainless steel hose clamps (for retaining the chimney shape), a small metal can (chimney top and bottom inserts), 2 steel bread pans (firebox), 4 thumbscrews, 8 hex nuts, and 4 wingnuts (hardware for assembling the firebox). The chimney rolls up short for packing, long for use. It naturally wants to assume the long tubular chimney shape after it goes through a single heating and cooling cycle. This stove/chimney design is simple to set up, and it works great for occasions when an open fire isn’t desired or permitted. I’ve drawn up plans and gathered materials for a new, lighter, more functional, easier-to-pack firebox. But I haven’t made much effort to construct it, yet. Too many projects, too little time.

My goals for this outing:

Have a little time to meditate.
Play with fire.
Test some gear: Equinox ultralight bivy, Golite Jam2 pack, Brunton folding ti spork, ¾-length Thermorest Ridge Rest pad (I usually use a Big Agnes), Light My Fire Swedish Firesteel Mini.

Rain was in the forecast, but I knew I’d stay warm and dry if I got my stove and tent set up quickly and correctly.

I found a clearing that I thought I’d used before. Everything looks different (or the same) in the dark. I set up my Golite Lair 1 Tarptent and assembled my woodstove. Then I started a fire in the stove, using my flint and steel, to get some water boiling to cook my dinner. After 5 minutes of hot fire, I melted the thin steel fishing leader I was using to support the stove chimney at a fixed distance from the tent. Damn. Without it, the stove and chimney could fall into the tent or ridgeline and melt them or burn my gear and me. Hmmm. My choices were to go without fire, MacGyver something, or walk back to the office and make a new support line out of discarded shifter cable. Regrettably, I chose to walk back to the office and make a new tether.

I started off toward the office (or so I thought) with my knife, a couple of red LED headlamps (better than white lights for retaining night vision), my waterproof Windmill butane lighter, and my wallet (it has my security keycard in it). After 5 minutes, I realized that I should have grabbed my compass, too. I was lost, and I had no reference points to figure out my direction. The sky was overcast, so there were no visible stars. And the brush was thick enough to block any lights from nearby homes and businesses. I could hear some car traffic noise, but it came from two directions. I couldn’t rely on that, alone, to get me out of the woods. Finally, after 45 minutes of wandering and wondering, I determined, based on the lack of undergrowth, I was on the north side of an East-West ridge. I followed the ridge until it led me out to a known trail 1 km from where I originally intended to go. I was pissed, but, at least, I knew where I was. So, I walked back to the office to fabricate the new chimney tether. I was in and out in 10 minutes and headed back towards my site.

I was certain that I knew where my campsite was, so I entered the woods on a side trail that led to the clearing where I supposedly had set up camp. I got to the clearing quickly, but soon realized that my site was not there. How could this be? Is this some type of cruel joke? I could do nothing but begin the search for my tent as lightning flashed in the distance. I criss-crossed the ridge for an hour, looking for my small, dark green tent, while the strands from the derailleur cable chimney tether stuck me in the right butt cheek through the inner wall of my back pocket. I was so focused on finding my site that I mostly ignored this new pain in the ass. My red LED headlights did little good in the thick undergrowth of the forest. A white light would have been much better. Plus, some of the lines on my tent are reflective, and the white light picks this up much better than the red. It seems I brought a knife to the gunfight. Again and again, I circled around and came back to the same familiar clearing without finding my campsite. Unbelievable.

Plan B. My phone was in my tent, so I decided to walk back to the office, call my wife, and ask her, oh-so-nicely, to call my cell phone repeatedly for 30 minutes, so I might be able to hear my phone and then locate the tent that was housing it. It was after midnight by the time I reached my desk, and Lynn was not pleased to receive my call at that late hour. But she agreed to cooperate and help me find my lost goods. As I headed toward the building exit, I grabbed the white-LED Cateye headlamp off my bike to aid in my search.

As soon as I left the building, the rain started to fall…softly at first, but growing heavier as the minutes passed. The temperature was still in the 70’s (unseasonably warm for October in Minnesota), so I carried on toward the direction of my site. I entered the woods where I had originally gone in earlier that evening. Once again, I ended up in the familiar clearing that wasn’t my campsite. I listened for the distinctive ring of my cell phone, but I could only hear the dull white noise from the heavy rain hitting the leaves of the trees and plants that surrounded me. I was soaked to the skin, but I wasn’t ready to give up. So I systematically bushwhacked my way out of, and back to, the same spot from different points at the perimeter of the clearing. Then things got more interesting. As I bashed through another random thicket, my right eyeball tried to shish-kabob itself on a sharp branch…effectively blinding me on the right side as the left eye watered sympathetically. I took the hint from Mother Nature. It was time to cut my losses and get out of the woods before something else went wrong.

I walked back to the office for the third time, soaked, tired, partially blind, mentally defeated, scratched, bruised, and bleeding from my fruitless 3-hour tromp through the sticks. When I got back to the building, I changed into some dry clothes, called my not-so-understanding lady, and bedded down on a soft-sided bike case behind our frame alignment table in the QC shop. Sleep did not come easy. My eye felt like it was covered in coarse sand, and I couldn’t shake the paranoid vision of my tent flying off into the abyss, leaving my gear open to the elements.

At 8:30am, the high-pitched sounds of forklifts in the warehouse woke me up from a light slumber. The sun was up, and the rain had stopped. So I decided to start another search for my gear.

My right eye was swollen and half closed, but I could see well enough to ride and walk slowly. I pedaled the Big Dummy into the woods as far as I could and hid it from potentially prying eyes. Once again, the deer trails led me into the all-too-familiar, not-my-campsite clearing. From there, I walked East and West, North and South, around and around and around for 45 minutes without any luck. Then, as I was losing all hope, there it was. I looked upon the large, flat clearing that was my campsite. My tent was still standing, and my gear was dry. I was elated that I found my stuff safe and secure, but I was bewildered by the fact that I hadn’t been able to find that spot sooner. I’m sure I walked within 5 meters of my tent a number of times before it was finally discovered.

As I packed up my gear and felt my spirits lifting a bit, Mother Nature bitch-slapped me again with another soaking downpour. The rain stopped 5 minutes later, just as I returned to the office looking like a beat-down, drenched rat.

This was a painful adventure, but it taught me a few lessons: I’ll carry a compass in my pocket, along with my knife and fire, when I’m in the woods. I’ll be more observant of my surroundings when bushwhacking into a new campsite. Night-hiking away from camp should be prioritized as a last resort. Red LEDs don’t work well for pushing through thick undergrowth. And most important…I learned that I have a lot to learn about living and playing in the woods.

2008 Surly products and Interbike tradeshow recap

We travel to Las Vegas once a year for a dealer-only tradeshow called Interbike. It's ironic that such a car-cultured town hosts a bicycle tradeshow, but once outside the Las Vegas boulevard strip of casinos and stripmalls, there is actually a normal town with good riding to be found. I also found a live desert tortoise and some wild burros.

The show itself reveals what every bike company has been working for the next year. For Surly, we debuted three new things and some new colors in the line up, here they are:

- Travelers-Check
This a Cross-Check frameset with S & S machined couplers installed so you can disassemble the bike in half and carry it in a luggage case. The couplers are beautifully machined stainless steel and they've been on the market for years with an excellent track record. The Travelers-Check will be available as a frameset only in Deep Water Blue color, similar to the original Cross-Check if anybody recalls that far back. MSRP for the frameset is $1075 and they should be available around January/Febraury 2008. The cost does not include the luggage case, but there are a couple options available directly through S & S and also through our distributor. I spent $160 roundtrip getting my standard Karate Monkey on the plane to/from Vegas, so we estimate the upcharge of the coupled frame and cost of a case will pay itself off in 4-5 trips.

In addition to cost, if you took a stock Cross-Check and sent it to a framebuilder to have couplers installed, it would cost you more money than a standard Travelers-Check. Not to mention, we've made sure the thicker part of the top tube and down tubes extend beyond the couplers, so it would be stronger than a retrofit Cross-Check. Did I mention warranty? If you modified your Cross-Check with couplers or paint, it would void the warranty.

-Stainless Steel Seat Collar
Our Constrictor seat collar has been successfully holding up seatposts for many years, but it was time to add something a little nicer looking with the same functionality. Since stainless steel is both tough, pretty and seen throughout the Surly parts lineup, it was a natural choice. It will become the stock seat collar on all Surly framesets and bikes next year (except Instigator and Conundrum), MSRP will be in the $20 range and they should be available around January/Febraury 2008. The good old Constrictor will still be stock on Instigator and Conundrum models, plus available as an aftermarket option.

-Rear Brake Hanger
This was designed specifically to alleviate the discepancy in power and feel between front and rear brakes due to poor housing routing. For example, the rear brake cable routing on our Cross-Check was not ideal and required use of a perfect length of housing to eliminate a mushy feeling rear brake. Instead of adding a permanent cable stop to the seat stays that wouldn't be used by v-brake or fixie riders, we simply designed a new hanger that is about 70mm long. All this does is make a cleaner route for the housing, resulting in almost identical power and feel between front and rear brake levers. In addition, it also has an adjustable barrel for fine tuning. It's a simple product, but one that will help on the Cross-Check and any other bike with similar problems. We're happy to say Grant Peterson is also spec'ing these on all Rivendell Bleriot framesets. MSRP is $9 and they are in stock now.

-Long Haul Trucker
The lack of availability of the LHT complete bike has certainly been the biggest thorn in our side this year. We forecasted over a year ago what we expected to sell based on Cross-Check complete bike and comparative frameset sales figures, got the parts companies to commit to supplying the components and figured we'd done our job. What we didn't expect was that demand would be so high that each shipment we received was gone in less than 2 weeks. Since it takes a long time to rebound with supply, we expect that 2008 will be a much easier to get your hands on one. MSRP should remain at $985, there will be very minor component changes (new year equals new-look Shimano derailleur, etc) and in addition to the Utility Blue color, there will also be a new Olive green color in complete and framesets. The new Olive Greens are slated for late Winter 2008. Thanks for having patience with us on this one!

- 1x1 frameset
Did you know the 1x1 is officially 10 years old and was the second product in our lineup (next to the Singleator), even before the Surly name existed? For this year, we opted for a paint color change to Punkin Orange with all black decals and headbadge. The common reaction at the show was "I didn't want one until I saw it", but you can judge for yourself. This new color will compliment the perennial Black color (white decals) and will be available around March 2008. This means the Lemon/Lime Green color will be gone for good once they sell out.

-Big Dummy
One of the best one-liners of the show we heard was "my favorite new product for 2006 Interbike was the Big Dummy". So why isn't it available yet? The very first prototype we got arrived at the show last year with exactly zero test miles on it. After which, we had two more rounds of prototypes built before we were satisfied with the result. In between each of the three rounds of protos came a thorough testing period where we rode them, modified stuff and swapped parts to determine everything from ride quality, load capacity, how it handled with different loads, how a Stokemonkey motor mounted onto it, how thick some of the tubes should be, how the large boxes will be handled by freight companies and countless other small details. It's a much more complex project than even the Pugsley, so the timeframe from 1st prototype to finished and available product taking a year and a half doesn't really sound that long. We're glad we took the time to perfect this bike because the end results that we're riding right now are going to make all of you crap haulers out there happy. So we're expecting these to be available to you by Febraury 2008. We'll also be posting a lengthy spew for the blog page in the next month about all our opinions and ideas about building and riding your Big Dummy or Xtracycle.

- Mr.Whirly cranks
This project simply shatters the record for how long it's taken us to get something to materialize. Here are our lame excuses for the lengthy timeframe. First off, it's a complicated project that has required multiple engineers and multiple manufacturers. Second, the project actually went no where for 6 months while we caught up on other stuff that needed to get done. Third, we've changed a bunch of things along the design process and after riding the samples. We've had rideable samples now since late Winter of this year and have good results on them. But the changes we've made have required new forge tooling and a number of other small modifications. I don't know how many times I've written something about an ETA on this product, but I promise this will not be vaporware much longer. The current timeframe is a tentative and vague late Winter/early Spring 2008. But they will come and they will be full of awesome.

For all the photos of Las Vegas trails and new Surly products, click here
Interbike recap photos

I stole this from Speedgoat's Interbike blog coverage (which, as usual, is not what it sounds like) because it is very, very funny. And dead on. Chris is, in my book, one of The People Who Get It, and I do not even know what It is, nor does anyone else as far as I can tell, but if there is an It, Chris gets It, possibly even subscribes to It, and if he weren't so damn good at bikes he could make a respectable living as a salesman for It.


THE ERIC SOVERN INTERVIEW
Day one on the show floor, and my journalism kung fu gets strong. Witness my interview with Surly's Eric Sovern. The next time somebody asks me what's so special about Surly, I'm going to refer him to this blog.



Chris: Are you related to Lady Sovereign?
Eric: I wouldn't say related. I would say I was a big influence on her . . . her music. She was, you know, on a street corner, and she was doing mostly jazz skat kinda singing, and I said, "You know what you oughta do? You should get into the hip-hop." So she took, you know, my name.
Chris: Would you say Jay-z ruined her?
Eric: Jay-Z is a bitch, and if I see that man, I will personally raise my strong hand.
Chris: So are we down then?
Eric: Oh yeah.
Chris: 'Cause we have . . . what's his name again . . . oh yeah, L'il Wayne. We have L'il Wayne in our corner.
Eric: L'il Wayne.
Chris: Yeah, L'il Wayne.
Eric: Is it "L'il" Wayne?
Chris: Of course. Of course. The only other question is, recently I've seen an article in a magazine where they cut parts in half to show you how they work.
Eric: Yeah.
Chris: Are you willing today to start cutting Surly parts in half for us?
Eric: Uhhh, the problem with cutting Surly parts in half is that the goey center will spill all over everything . . . and we'll be swimming in nugat.
Chris: What about, how about, would you help us cut some White Industries stuff in half?
Eric: That stuff is really well made. I don't know if we could cut it.

These were not softballs, and Eric stepped up and brought it, offering arguably the most insightful comments about Surly products I've ever heard. And this was at 9:15am, after only one beer. People, this man is a visionary.

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Also on the docket this week is a new website with which I am wholly unfamilar but which has such nerdolescent post heading teasers as Knot Tying 101 and You Can Do That With A Space Blanket? and How To Have Good Sex In The Woods. It occurs to me that perhaps all three of those articles are related. Uncooped.com describe themselves as "an outdoor adventure network based in Minneapolis." I like their succinct approach to adjective.
I would like to underline the fact that this website is not something I have spent any time on. In fact, it was spammed to me and in spite of my normal tendencies to auto-delete spams and to only post links with which I am familiar, I actually opened it up and it looks, at cursory glance, to be possibly useful. The email from Bruno, who seems to have started this website, says that it is a place to "share pictures of your adventures, get advice from experts, and find inspiration to get out and get active." Sounds like a tall order for any website, and I'd point out that any of those titles I mentioned seem to cover the sorts of topics that you as a consumer would benefit more completely from if the authors in fact prove to be knowledgeable and articulate professors of their field of study. I believe this would be particularly true for those articles covering health-impairing activities such as first time ice climbing (see the article titled 5 Rules For Your First Time Ice Climbing). But again, I haven't really read it. I mention this because it seems to me a person could really get into a jam fast if one went, for example, ice climbing for the first time armed only with knowledge gleaned from some yahoo on some website linked for no good reason by an idiot who doesn't know the first thing about ice climbing. And that idiot is me. Perhaps if they had asked me to write something like 5 Mixers You Can Make With Berries & Twigs Found Whilst Napping Off Last Night Under A Bush, perhaps then I would feel confident offering this as an indispensible website pimping the strong hand insights of professionals. As it is, you'll have to log on for yourself and see if offers you anything useful. Free market evolution and all that.

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Shattered

As I look around the Surly office I realize that I am the only one here. It's just me, some strong coffee and about 300 emails to sift through. The rest of the slugs are shattered and scattered, so if you try to call or email us today you'll likely be a bit disappointed by the amount of time it takes me/us to respond, but rest assured we'll get back to you just as soon as we recover from the weeklong meat grinder otherwise known as Interbike.

In case you are wondering how it went...


Click on the photo to see the rest of my pictures from Interbike and On Dirt Demo.

For those people I met there I sincerely thank you for coming by our Dirt Demo tent and/or Interbike booth. We are all glad it's over, but look forward to seeing you again next year.

-Peter