A Big Welcome

Last night I picked up my Surly Big Dummy. I brought it home and had some parts waiting for me on my front porch that I ordered last week. Perfect timing!

I started opening my boxes, first was Hardcore Fenders from Planet Bike. Next was my Nashbar order, bar wrap, 2 sided Shimano pedals, Cateye Computer, and...wait a minute I'm missing something. What did I order? Looking at the invoice I saw that my handlebars and Brooks Saddle were missing. They are on backorder. Great! The seat that comes with the SBD is not comfortable (as with most bikes) and the handlebars are boring with one hand position available.

First thing I did was put the fenders on.

There were a few issues getting the fenders on. I'll detail that in a later post since I still have a couple things left to do on them.

After that I put on the pedals and computer and got the racks and bags put back on. I am really bummed that the handlebars were backordered. The Brooks was not that big of a deal since I can use the one off my other bike that is already broke in.

I did get an unexpected upgrade. The back deck was not the standard wood deck. Instead it came with the Flightdeck, which is made from recycled plastic. It has a ton of holes drilled in it for mounting various DIY things. I'm excited about this. I will have fun thinking up things to attach to this.

I'm a Big Dummy

My weight loss has subsided for now so my clydesdale status is no longer in jeopardy. I have also not been riding as much as I like. My running has been hit and miss but has been picking up lately. I'm still struggling to work out consistently. The one thing I have started doing consistently is going on the Thursday taco ride or doing a Friday night ride with some friends. I'll load up my bike with beers, moscow mules, hot dogs, charcoal and ride 6 miles to Margaritaville to grill out and drink all night. Now I love my Jamis touring bike but I'd prefer to have a bike dedicated to doing these trail rides on the Wabash. I want to keep the grime off my touring bike for actual road touring.

So I'm still wanting to get a new road bike but I'm going to hold off on that until next year. I now have a desire to get a "trail bike". I told my wife if I could just get 2 more bikes I'd be set for any type of ride I'd ever want to do. So the search began for a trail bike that was durable (steel preferably), comfortable, and could haul a lot of gear (cooler, camping gear, stereo, food, ect.). I started looking at cargo bikes. The Surly Big Dummy and Trek Transport were the two I'd heard of. I found more, a lot more, but ultimately I kept coming back to the Surly. The Trek was aluminium, the Kona was aluminium, the Yuba Mundo was it's closest competition but although it was steel it had lesser components, v brakes, one size "fits all" frame, and reportedly weighs considerably more.

All things considered the Surly is the best cargo bike on the market. The thing that really gravitated me to the Surly BD was the compatibility of xtracycle accessories. I knew with these cargo bikes being new to the market finding accessories would be an issue. Xtracycle already has a solid line of accessories that I get for this bike. Surly outfitted the bike nicely. It has disc brakes, a necessity for heavily loaded bikes. It has the new Shimano index shifters, which are really nice.

I checked around with a few LBS's and found one that had a demo bike. I went and gave it a test ride and really liked the solid feel of it. It did feel weird at first but after a few blocks of riding I quickly adjusted to its ride. The long wheel base minimizes bumps in the road, it shifted smoother than any bike I've ever had, and it's gearing allows you ride it anywhere.

So the next step was to see when he could get me one. He said Surly was out of stock and would have to call his rep the next day to check on availability. The next day he called and said they had just come in and his rep grabbed him one (the last one left in my size frame) and was going to ship it out. Tuesday it should be in and I hope to bring it home Wednesday or Thursday.