Is there a better song writer then Jackson Browne? Discuss.
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Author: Bike Hermit®
Wednesday is Surly Bikes’ latest iteration of the fatbike. Starting with the Pugsley and the Moonlander bikes, then bringing out the Ice Cream Truck a few years later- in the meantime inventing the 29+ standard with the Krampus and ECR bikes- Surly appears to be looking for the sweet spot in the crowded fatbike market. The fact that every bike maker now has a fatbike in the line means that there are new standards for components such as hubs and bottom brackets that are specific to the unique requirements of fatbikes, and the Wednesday takes advantage of the resultant economies of scale.
There’s Fat and There’s Fat
The Wednesday comes stock with Surly’s 80mm wide My Other Brother Darryl rims which will fit either the stock 3.8″ tires or up to 4.6″ tires. If swapping to the bigger tires all that needs to be done is to slide the rear wheel back in the horizontal dropout for clearance; the fork is wide enough for the fatter tires. Rather than offsetting the rear triangle and wheel in order to use a traditional 135mm rear hub, à la the Pugsley, the Wednesday uses a 170-177 rear spacing, depending on what type of axle is being used; 10mm or 12mm. The front fork uses a 150 x 15mm thru axle. The bike will work well with a 100mm suspension for as well.
Frame Considerations
The head tube on this bike is over-sized at 44mm. I guess this is from the mountain bike industry because many suspension forks now come with tapered steer tubes and in order to retrofit a fatbike with a suspension fork, a bigger head tube is needed. Still, suspension on a bike with 4 to 5″ wide tires? Seems redundant and unnecessary. Using a Truvativ (SRAM) double chain ring lets Surly use a “standard” 100mm bottom bracket shell which still allows moving the chain out far enough to clear the big fat tires.
The Surly catalog says the “Wednesday sits in the middle of our ride-anywhere Pugsley and the modern trail geometry of the Ice Cream Truck”. I’m not sure what that means relative to ride characteristics, but the Wednesday and the Ice Cream Truck both have shorter seat tubes and longer effective top tubes as well as longer overall wheelbase for a given size than either the Pugsley or the Moonlander bikes. Apparently, also according to the Surly catalog, the ride of the Wednesday is similar to that of the Krampus, their 29+ bike.
A customer needed a new front wheel for the new Straggler fork on his Cross Check. He wanted a disc brake on front for single track riding and the Straggler fork is very close to the Cross Check fork geometry-wise. I built up the wheel using a Surly Ultra New hub and the DT Swiss E512 rim which at 30mm wide is a full 11mm wider than the DT Swiss R450 rim on the wheel he was replacing.
Why did I use such a wide rim? For a couple of reasons. The same tire, in this case a 700 x 35 Continental Cyclocross Speed, on a wider rim will have a wider contact patch than when mounted on a narrower rim and this means more traction. The tire will also have a cross section which will be a little more “square” and less balloon like. What this means, in theory, is that the tire will have less tendency to roll sideways when the wheel is angled into a turn and the handling should be more firm and confidence inspiring with no squirming. This idea is visually represented in the following two pictures:
Photo: syntaceusa.com
When it was done, we gained about 4mm in width to the inflated tire, a little over 1%. While that doesn’t sound like a significant increase it should stiffen up the sidewalls of this tire and contribute to better handling and cornering. The combination of a little bit of extra width in the tire and a deeper rim profile make the wheel and tire look quite a bit bigger then the original setup on this bike. Neither a Cross Check nor a Straggler now. Monster Crossler?
B. suggested a mid-week overnight trip on the Bikes to Atlanta, ID. I was keen to go and was delighted when my secretary reported I had no pressing obligations on the proposed days.
The next few photos are of some of the hunting camps that are set up along side the road. Hunting season opened on Monday of this week and it looks as though these camps were set up several days or weeks before. We shared our spot in Atlanta with a party of 35 people who were there for the next two weeks. I’m sure they had as much difficulty understanding our enjoyment of our past time as I did of theirs.
Indeed, Sky King has a new love. I happen to be quite spoiled and spend many happy hours on my ” Excellent Creative Riding” machine also known as the “Extremely Cool Ride” and for those of you who don’t know me, just call it my Surly ECR.
We ventured out in August for a S24O to Crutcher Crossing. The road/trail/path is two track, dirt and rock. The first 7 miles pass through a Juniper forest. Juniper’s are invasive species in the Owyhee Mountains and this section is currently being logged. Given that, the road had impressive ruts, especially on hilly corners. We hadn’t traveled far and as I negotiated a rutted corner my tires slipped out and boom, on the ground I go. While I don’t consider myself the most technical descender – especially on a loaded bike – I should have negotiated the corner just fine. Back on the bike, half mile down the road and boom, slipped out again. After a few choice words I take a serious look at my tires – the original Surly Knard 29+3 27tpi. Yep, the side edge tread is pretty much worn to zilch – oops.
I’ve never had a big complaint with the Surly Knard tires. Some of my riding buddies have commented on the lack of a grippy edge but I never mind hopping off and walking some of the steep. The rest of the trip I certainly paid attention and took a less aggressive approach to the rest of the rutted corners.
Did I mention I was spoiled, oh yeah, I did. A few days after the trip the Bike Hermit surprised me with a set of Maxxis Chronicles.
This is a relatively new 29+3 so I had some trepidation. Ha, silly girl. The tread is perfect for a wide variety of terrain. I have the 120 TPI casing and the tire is lighter than my Surly Knards. The roll on pavement is excellent. On our very technical ride to Pipeline crossing, in the Owyhee desert the tires, hands down, out performed the Knards. The side grip is great. I didn’t have any slips, any spin outs or questionable traction issues. The Excellent Cool Ride bounced and jostled along happily – almost as if the person riding had advance to “pro” status. Look out Bike Hermit!
(Logan, over at bikepacking.com has a detailed review of the Maxxis Chronicle)
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The Watercarriers
Not to be confused with The Stars and The Watercarriers.
One particular overnight desert bikepacking trip in the desert of southern Idaho had the potential for a little extra discomfort. We had planned on being able to get water out of the river at the end of the ride, but the river gurgled along several hundred feet below us at the bottom of the vertical gap it is cutting through this volcanic plateau.
We took a quick inventory of water we had on board and decided we wouldn’t die but that we would need to be careful. Ultimately we found a way down to the water by hiking a couple miles downstream. I was prompted to write this post about some ways to carry water on the bike.
-First is the good old hydration pack- 70 or 100 ounces (2 or 3 liters) carried on the rider’s back. Some people complain about the discomfort of carrying a back pack in hot weather, but to me it is worth it. Especially since you can stuff other things into the pack besides the water bladder.
-Standard water bottles fit in standard bottle cages which bolt to the bike carry 22 or 24 ounces (around .7 liter each) If the forks on the bike have bottle bosses you can carry one or two more bottles there. You can add additional mounts for standard cages, either on the fork or one of the bicycle main tubes, by using the Elite VIP Bottlecage Clips.
-The Revelate Designs Mountain Feedbag works well for carrying too and the new designs holds a 32 ounce nalgene.
-Topeak make the Modula bottle cage which mounts to the two standard bolt holes and is designed to carry the large plastic 1 to 1.5 liter bottles sold at most convenience stores.
–Velo Orange Mojave bottle cage with 32 ounce (.95 liter) Nalgene bottle or 40 ounce (1.2 liter) Klean Kanteen. These bolt onto the standard two bolt mounts on most bikes or, even better, with three bolts using the mounts now found on some bikepacking bike forks and frames. Combine one of the VIP Bottlecage Clips with the two bosses on the bike for extra security.
-In locales without services but with access to surface water you will need a water filter or purifier. We use the Camelbak All Clear water bottle which incorporates an ultraviolet light in the cap which and will kill all the bugs in .75 liters of water (25 ounces) in 60 seconds. A mechanical filter like the Platypus GravityWorks is potentially a little bit faster.
-If there will be no access to surface water and no services then carry an additional 4 or 6 liters (135 or 203 ounces) in the MSR Dromedary bladder.
Every trip and every day will have different requirements for how much water needs to be carried. These are just a few ideas to think about. Let me know what I missed in the comments.
The Surly Junk Strap is essentially a super long (48″) nylon toe clip strap. Toe clip straps are those straps which wrap around the rear edge of a pedal, through the eye of the toe clip and are cinched down to hold the rider’s foot in place. Not too many people use this type of pedal system anymore but the design made it easy to adjust the straps while riding and it was very secure. The same simplicity and strength makes these almost indispensable for bike touring and bikepacking.
It’s Friday afternoon about 4:30 and I’m in the weeds. I’ve had pretty steady walk in traffic and I am just starting to fulfill the online orders which came in today. Don’t get me wrong; these are good problems and I really appreciate every customer. But I’m tired, and the thought of going to a dinner party tonight and then getting the bikes ready for an overnight bikepacking trip tomorrow is actually depressing. That’s the opposite of how it’s supposed to work: we go to dinner parties and plan trips in order to relax and rejuvenate and get away from the grind, I think. Maybe the depression was just from feeling too tired to do the things that normally are enjoyable. Luckily, Sky King never cuts me any slack, and so I change my clothes and trudge off to the dinner party, which turns out not to be horrible. The other attendees are wine aficionados, which the Bike Hermit is not. I feel a little intimidated and inadequate as I quaff my Josephsbrau Heller Bock. But I do learn some stuff about wine and sample most of the varieties which were paired with the different courses. The hostess is a great cook and the company is highly entertaining. In spite of my plans to be irascible, I enjoy myself and by the time we walk home I feel quite a bit better. (maybe it was all the wine sampling?)
We have the bikes loaded in the truck along with all our gear by mid-morning and we head south out of Boise. It is probably 2:30 PM or so by the time we start riding. Even though it is over 100 degrees in Boise today it is not even 90 here at 7,000 feet. A rancher rides up on a four-wheeler with his horse’s saddle slung across the front. We ask him for directions and about the road and we discover that he and his fellow wranglers just drove some cattle down to Bull Basin- where he left his horse. His speech is slow and deliberate, as if he is carefully considering what he is going to say. I imagine I see the beginnings of a grin as he thinks to himself things he decides not to say. I’m sort of disappointed that he is wearing a ball cap, even if his boots appear authentic cowboy. Why not be totally awesome and wear a custom West Texas Cattleman if you are living the life?
We roll generally downhill for 9 miles to Bull Basin where the road t-bones at a posted gate, behind which stands our cowboy’s paint. We turn left and through a second gate, which is posted with a bleached out sign which is unreadable, into a fenced compound where the cattle are chilling. The road crosses a swampy spring with water the color of black tea, passes through another gate and heads up out of the basin. This last gate is not signed which makes me believe the short section of private land we just crossed is de facto not posted.
It was almost 7 PM by the time we reached Crutcher Crossing. We drank our cans of Dales Pale Ale, bathed in the Owyhee River, ate dinner and passed out. In the morning we ate breakfast, packed the bikes and headed back up the trail. This was a very workmanlike S24O bikepacking overnighter, but I still felt as though I had escaped the grind. I was physically very tired but mentally prepared to get back to the salt mine on Monday.
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The Bicycle Threat
ASLE is an acronym for the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment. Those words together in that order adumbrate concepts beyond the scope of these pages, indeed, concepts beyond the understanding of yours truly. Evan Worthington, who is one of the Boise BLM Wilderness Rangers forwarded to me a draft of a paper presented by Matthew Pangborn at the 2015 ASLE Conference in Moscow, ID. Mr. Pangborn gave permission to Evan to share the paper as he sees fit, so I consider that permission to have accrued to me. The paper presents ideas I have often had but communicates them in ways I never could. In the paper a bicycle becomes a text, is seen as a triviality, then as an annoyance and finally as a threat. Hope you enjoy it and will respond with comments.
(I should have checked with Mr. Pangborn first. Because of the arcane rules of traditional publishing he would not allow me to post this. Trust me though; it was real good.)
A bicycle with disc brakes can present some challenges when it comes to attaching fenders and, sometimes, racks. Especially tricky is the front wheel where the brake caliper is bolted onto the adapter on the back side of the left fork blade. In my experience the Gilles Berthoud stainless steel fenders are the perfect fender for the Surly Disc Trucker or the Long Haul Trucker for that matter. The single stay for both front and rear fenders is easier to deal with than the twin stay design of most composite fenders. The stays attach low on the backside of the front fender which not only looks elegant but cleanly routes the stay below the front brake caliper.
Having installed dozens of these fender sets, it occurred to me that some people might be interested in a short tutorial on how to go about it. So hopefully this will be useful.
Installation tools needed:
– Drill with a sharp 5mm or 13/64″ bit.
– Cloth tape measure or a piece of string to find the center of the fender.
– 10mm and 7mm socket or box wrenches
– 3mm and 2.5mm hex wrenches
– Bolt cutters or Dremel tool with a cutoff blade. (A hacksaw will work in a pinch).
– Metal file
– Metal punch to start drill bit
– Permanent marker (Sharpie)
Parts Included:
Front Fender:
The Gilles Berthoud fenders are packaged with an eyebolt or “daruma” bolt for the front fender. Berthoud assumes the bike will have either sidepull or centerpull brakes and the eye of the daruma bolt slips over the brake bolt and dangles down out of the bottom of the fork steer tube. If your bike has cantilever or disc brakes you will need a 5mm or 6mm bolt long enough to go completely through the fork crown (Hopefully your bike has a hole drilled through) with enough thread left over to screw on a nut with a lock washer. A 35mm bolt usually is long enough for this.
The front fender receives the dangling daruma bolt through the pre-drilled hole and is spaced away from the fork crown with the included metal fender washer and rubber washer. Berthoud also assumes the bike will have a 1″ steer tube so for a 1 1/8″ steer tube I use a larger fender washer than the one supplied.
I usually bolt on the front stays before I make the fork crown attachment and I loosely screw the fender stay p-clamps to the holes in the fork dropout. Once the fender is in place at the fork crown I put the tire back on the bike and hold the back end of the fender in place while I line up the ends of the stays with the p-clamps and mark them with a sharpie where they will need to be cut. I snip off the ends with a pair of bolt cutters (the Dremel tool or a hack saw could be used here) and file the sharp edges before slipping them into the p-clamps for final tightening.
Rear Fender:
A bicycle with a well thought out design for the rear wheel disc brake adapter places the caliper inside the triangle created by the seatstay and chainstay, where it is out of the way of the fender stay attachments. As such, the rear fender is usually less of a challenge; at least relative to the disc brake. But the installation usually involves removing and replacing the wheel several times in order to make adjustments to the fender line.
I start by holding the rear fender in place to see how much clearance there is at the front, between the chainstays and between the fender and the bridge between the chainstays. Usually, a spacer, which can be anything from a sawed off wine cork to a piece of aluminum tubing to 3 or 4 of those little washers that screw onto tube valve stems, is required between the bridge and the fender.
This is the first solid attachment I make. Again, the stays are bolted onto the fender before I start, so once I make the first attachment I can put the wheel back on and hold the rear end of the fender in place to mark where I want to cut the stays. Once those are cut to length and the sharp edges filed off they can be clamped into the p-clamps. There is one final, crucial step to installing the rear fenders. After the fender line has been established, and everything is held in place on the bike with the connections I have already made, it is time to drill a hole in the fender where it will be bolted onto the brake bridge. Here is the third assumption that Berthoud makes; that the bike in question has a threaded hole on the bottom of the brake bridge into which a bolt holding the fender can be screwed. If the bike does have the threaded hole then it is relatively simple to mark the spot on the fender and drill the hole. To find the spot to drill the hole for an L-bracket, bolt the bracket onto the brake bridge and, holding the fender at the desired clearance from the tire, mark the hole locations with the Sharpie.
Mark the hole and find the center of the fender crown using the cloth tape measure or the string. The metal punch is sort of critical because stainless steel is hard and the drill bit will wander around before starting to cut if there is not some sort of indentation for a guide. A one-hand-held spring punch is ideal for this.
I just read through this instructional and it seems sort of complicated for the average person who doesn’t do this sort of thing everyday. I can say that installing fenders takes way more time than I can reasonably charge for. However, if one has some patience and a modicum of skill, or desire to learn, along with a few tools, it can be sort of rewarding. Then there is the opinion (mine) that a touring bike only looks complete after fenders have been installed. Hope this helps somebody. Please comment if I have left anything out or left you more confused than when you started reading.