The Long Haul Review of the Surly Long Haul Trucker

Of the many, many photos I've put on this blog, the majority of them are either of or involve my bike, which is a 46 cm 2010 Surly Long Haul Trucker in a color that's officially called "Blue Velvet," but is no longer available.  In two or so years I've owned this bike, I've ridden it more days than not.  It has had several incarnations, and taken on many roles.  So I thought it was time for a proper review of a bike that's actually really hard to find a halfway decent review.

When I originally purchased this bike, it was with the eventual goal of taking six months off life and touring the majestic hills and valleys of either South America or Europe - and who knows, some day I might.  But this bike's utility stretches way, WAY beyond it's stated purpose as a chariot for White People Vacation.

My bike was purchased as the stock build, and aside from the contact points (saddle, pedals, and handlebars) and accessories, that's how it's stayed.  The frame is 4130 Cromoly Steel, and the drivetrain is more or less a mix of Tiagra front derailleur, Shimano XT rear derailleur, SRAM chain, bar end shifters.  The brakes are Tektro Oryx Cantilever, with Tektro brake levers.  It originally came with a fairly crap WTB saddle and black bar tape, with no pedals.  In the time I've had it, I've gone through a set of brake pads, a bottom bracket, a chain (and most of the way through the second one), some cables and housings, swapped out the saddle for a Brooks B-17S, and changed the standard drop bars for the Soma Moustache.  Here it is as it currently exists:

Accessories include Velo Orange Fenders, the Tubus Cargo rear rack, Pletscher double legged kickstand, battery powered lights by Planet Bike, two bottle cages, and a bell from New Belgium Brewery.  The accessories really do help make this bike as useful as it is - the thing about Surly is they're sold as what amounts to a platform, rather than a ready-made solution.  They have infinite utility, but they don't even come with pedals.  My setup is somewhat typical for this type of bike, but if you're used to riding racing-style roadbikes, fixed gears, or even an aluminum hybrid, my bike is going to seem like it has every accessory under the sun and then a couple on top of that.  With locks, lights, a jacket, some snacks, and two full bottles of water, it once came out to 42 pounds.  By city bike standards, it's not obscene, but by no means is that lightweight.  So let's just address that right now.

When it's time to talk about ride quality, there are a lot of words for it, but the one that comes most to mind is "Unperturbed.  "Unshakeable", "Stable," "Grounded" could all work, but basically if I hop off a curb into a pothole, the LHT rolls over these obstacles nary a wobble.  I've ridden it on a huge array of surfaces, which have included pavement, brick road, asphalt, gravel, packed limestone, natural trail/offroad, and dirt roads. This has included with minor loads and without.  This bike is as close as I've ever ridden to completely bombproof when it comes to going over the thing in front of me, no matter what it is.  This is not earth's fastest bike, but I don't have any trouble keeping up on the Thursday Night Social Ride, or when I'm getting around town.  The acceleration is certainly faster on other bikes, though, so if you're addicted to speed, the ridiculously long wheelbase of this bike creates a lot of stability, but doesn't make this a racer by anyone's stretch of imagination.  This is a Caddy, not a Corvette.  If you need any analogy for how this bike rides, that's it.  It rides like a Cadillac - comfortable, smooth, like you could sit on it all day.

Then there's "usefulness."  Back when I lived in DFW I primarily used Shadow, my Cannondale, for getting around because the NEAREST thing I wanted to get to was 6-8 miles away.  Then I got my Long Haul Trucker and my Cannondale became a really snappy-looking dust catcher.  I use this bike for just about everything  including recreational jaunts, longer rides to visit friends in Downtown, and heavy duty utility hauling.  That being said, it's primary role has been a heavy duty commuter.  While I'm pretty much off the bike as a utility cyclist for as long as I have to go home during lunch (the next several months), I have logged many, many days on this bike as my everyday go-to everything bike.  That's included riding to work, stopping at the store on the way home, carrying everything up a big hill,  dropping everything off at the house, parking the bike outside and throwing the dog on a leash to go for a trot around the block.  It does all of this with great aplomb.

Curiously, the handling actually seems to stabilize when you add weight to the bike.  Descending on the bike when it's loaded is a joy, and uphill isn't as much of a bear as you'd think, due to the frankly enormous gear range this bike is equipped with.  Without weight, it's still unbelievably stable and is totally capable of running over things that completely stop friends of mine who ride hybrids, roadbikes, and singlespeeds.  In fact, about the only bike that outdoes it for road-ready riding that can also deal with unpaved trails is the Surly Cross Check, which is a cyclocross frameset.

Now that I mention the Cross Check, one question I've gotten a lot relating to my choice of bike is, why not the Cross Check?  The answer is pure height.  The Long Haul Trucker comes in the option of 26" wheels across the full size range, while the Cross Check is only available in a 700C wheelset.  In a 46 cm bike, this creates a huge amount of potential for toe crossover, especially when you add fenders. This is a real issue for me any time I look at a new bike, and one with a wheelset available that eliminates the concern is worth its weight in gold.

So if I were to take this wall of text and tell you how I felt about the Surly Long Haul Trucker in a couple words.....it's awesome.  That's the only answer.  Get one.  You'll never look back.

Driving to Work

Everyone, say hi to Shiner, the newest employee of the Yay Bikes! headquarters:

Oh hai there!

Shiner is a 2 1/2 month old Rat Terrier puppy, and with the coming of the puppy, have come some (admittedly expected) effects on my life - namely, I'm driving to work every day so I can come home at lunch to let out He of the Tiny Bladder! The horror?

I'm also unable to do my usual groove at the Thursday Night Social Ride until he's old enough to handle me being gone from 7:30 - 5:30, then again from 6:30 - Midnight.  It's not fair on the puppy to expect him to handle those durations of absence without a damn good reason other than "I REALLY REALLY WANT TO", so for the meantime I'm only cycling on a local-errand-running and recreational level.  I've had times in the past few years where injuries, commute distance, and other circumstances have prevented me from being the vehicular cyclist we all know and love, but curiously, when my utility cycling goes down, my enjoyment of my "for fun" cycling goes up, as does my tendency to go exploring.

So for the meantime, I'm doing my best to be that driver who Shares the Road, and to (of course), teach Shiner how to ride a bike!

Biking to the Gym - idiosyncracy, or integration?

In what seems to become a series on the exceedingly boring things I do with my bike in my every day, several times a week I bike to the gym, a notion that is a bit at odds.  You bike to stay in shape, the gym is also for staying in shape, so why exercise to your exercise?

Unfortunately for myself, I am framed out so that I'd have been a total hottie in the Renaissance, but less so now - I've never been smaller than a size 10, even when I was riding 150 miles a week on my road bike and doing kettlebell exercises twice a week.  Some would say this is an issue of diet, but a lot of it is also genetics.  To make things a bit more difficult, there's an extreme genetic tendency on one side of my family towards adult-onset diabetes, and I also have a lifelong issue with my right knee and ankle.  All this adds up to REQUIRING exercise to stay healthy - I can't get away with it.  Despite my cycling, I'd noticed the number on the scale staying in a place a bit higher than I liked, so for my birthday, I got myself a membership at my local YMCA and set myself up a workout.

One weird thing is I absolutely hate changing clothes in a locker room - something about my Catholic upbringing forbids even slightly public nudity, even in a place built for changing clothes.  I tend to work out in a tshirt in shorts and avoid carrying a gym bag, so in the winter, it was a real challenge to motivate myself out the door.  Another issue is my workout shoes - I, as opposed to everyone else on the planet, work out in shoes that are honestly pretty terrible for cycling, the Vibram FiveFingers KomodoSport, which are basically gloves for my feet with a thin, textured sole designed to mimic the mechanics of walking barefoot.  They're great for my knees, terrible with my pedals.  The wind also cuts through them like, well, cold wind through thin material.  Or a hot knife through butter, whatever your preferred metaphor.  What it basically comes down to is that the clothing I work out in is TERRIBLE for cycling in the winter, and I always change before I leave the house, so the warm weather is a blessing for my motivation.

So where this lands me is a weird disconnect between cycling and working out - bike rides "don't count" unless they're over a certain distance, I change clothes to work out, but refuse to for cycling.  I think it might be that cycling has reached such a default point in my world that it no longer constitutes that little bit extra, so I keep having to find it somewhere else.  Am I alone on this?

Ride to Work for Fun

Wednesday at my job we had a bit of a mixer after work, with food, drinks, door prizes, and a photographer.  Being that it was about 10 minutes away, I hopped on my trusty steed and headed to a work function.  It's worth noting that while the weather is warming rapidly, it's still cool at night and worth bringing a jacket.

When I rolled up, they actually had bike racks available!  I may have been the only one using it, but it got used, darn it.  One thing that often baffles my coworkers is that I ride a bike quite frequently, but almost never "look like it".  I'm not sweaty, or covered in reflective clothing (bike lights is another story), and while my hair is always kind of a hot mess, I'd be lying if I blamed that on my cycling.

Here I am at my work function, after a couple beers and my own typical luck while trying to win a door prize (that is to say, I went home empty handed).  To modify the slogan of my former employers, there's almost never a bad time to ride.

Where's the Scenery?

Something I've been confounded by since my move to Austin is my difficulty finding beautiful rides that aren't terrifying passes of car-death.  As I am nominally a bike blogger, I also read bike blogs and it strikes me how many pictures there always seem to be of beautiful bike paths, fire roads, or small, two lane rural roads with no cars on them.  Maybe it's a bit of a timing choice on the part of the photographers of New England and the Pacific Northwest, but I'd really love to know where I can find places like that here in Austin.

When I initially started riding bikes, I lived in the Silicon Valley/Peninsula area of the San Fransisco Bay Area, which as scenery goes, is quite hard to beat.  From there I went home to the Dallas area, but my family is actually from the very edge of the Metroplex, and a 5 minute ride in the right direction surrounded me with rolling green fields of grazing cattle, open vistas of prairies and lakes, for as many miles as I cared to ride.

Yet since I've moved to Austin, I seem to have altogether stopped distance riding and I think part of it may be the roads considered to be "Good cycling" around here strike me as 6 lane speedways of noise and scary intersections of death.  The biggest example that comes to mine is Capitol of Texas Highway (also known as Loop 360), one of the most popular road cycling roads in the area.  This loop goes through the hills on the western edge of Austin and is nothing but soaring vistas, bridges over the Colorado River sparkling in the sunlight, edged cliffs, and steep hills.  Also, cars.  Lots of them.  Going in excess of 70 mph, depending on how closely they adhere to the speed limit.  At various points you're expected to cross freeway-style exits.  Then there's Parmer road, which leads northwest out of town.  6 lanes, 60 mph speed limit.  One thing that also strikes me about these roads is the proliferation of the "improved shoulder".  These roads don't have bike lanes, they have a lane-wide shoulder that is amazing to ride.....provided someone isn't currently parked there, or using it as a turn lane.

The kind of roads I want to spend my time on are two-lane country roads that take me through the countryside, with relatively little traffic.  Dirt fire-roads that lead me to a river and paths free of cars following babbling brooks (okay, Shoal Creek Trail totally accomplishes this).

A sign of how much I've given up sport cycling is I'm still in the process of selling my road bike, as I haven't put a mile on it in over 6 months.  The Surly does everything I could want my bike to do, and the day I find it impossible to take a touring bike on a long ride is probably the day I should sell it.  I just need somewhere to ride it that FEELS like a "tour."

So tell me - where's my scenic country bike ride?

Le bourru et la moustache

For those of you in the audience who abhor applications like Google Translate, that title is supposed to French for "The Surly and the Moustache". In my recent boredom with the configuration of the Surly, I recently acquired a set of Soma Moustache bars, some Thick and Zesty bar tape, and a mind to swap my drops for something a little more swept back.

I had originally planned to have either a bike mechanic friend or a shop install the handlebars, but cheapness, impatience, and self-reliance got the best of me, so I moved the bike into the kitchen and because the process of unraveling the leather bar tape I've dragged through rain and sun, dust and concrete, rides and falls. It looked like long strips of abused bacon.

I busted out my handy-dandy guide to bike maintenance, my toolbox, and the internets and set to work learning how to remove my shifters and brake hoods. It turns out you can literally do everything to remove my shifters, brake hoods, and handlebars with two or three Allen wrenches and a screwdriver. I pulled my shifters out of the handlebars, my hoods off the bars, and unscrewed the faceplate of my stem. My bike was headless!

Not to be deterred now, I busted out my shiny new handlebars, made sure they were even, and re-attached the faceplate of the stem so my bike wouldn't look quite so House on Haunted Hill. I very carefully re-attached the brake hoods, aligned them where I thought looked right, and tightened them down. Next came the shifters, one of which is aligned a tad crooked, but not so much it interferes with usage.

I test rode the new setup in downtown Austin before wrapping the bars, and once satisfied, ended up wrapping my handlebars standing next to the service counter of Mellow Johnny's bike shop - many thanks to their techs for loaning me a roll of electrical tape! My squishy new (bright red!) handlebar tape in place, my gentleman companion and I set off for the South by Southwest music festival (though that is another post entirely).

I think the new look is quite rakish and lends the TARDIS the air of the Red Baron - dashing, gentlemanly, and certainly evoking flight. The ride quality is distinctly different - for one thing, my hands seem to default WAY closer towards me than they ever did on the drop bars. This has the side effect of making me more upright, which has vastly improved my ability to change lanes in traffic - it's so much easier to look over my shoulder!

I feel like the mustache bars may be a bit of a concession on my part in some ways - when I purchased the Long Haul Trucker, it was with images of long tours in my mind, sweeping through mountain passes and only seeing new people as long as it took to pass through town. The reality has been much less grandiose - it's a bike I use to get around and do some heavy-duty commuting on. I've rarely ridden distances greater than 30 miles at a time in the last year and the bike's setup is slowly altering to reflect it's job as my city/everything bike. That in mind, I absolutely love these handlebars. I have a Long Haul Review of the Long Haul Trucker coming up after almost two years of doing everything BUT long-haul tour with this bike, and I'll include further comments on the handlebars after I've had a bit more time to become friends.

The Annual Blooming of the Spring Cyclist

Welcome to Austin, TX, where spring comes in February, the winters are mild, and people act like temperatures below 50 F are signs of the oncoming apocalypse.  Our weather through February has been beautifully spring-like - hovering in the 50s and 60s, alternately sunny and rainy.  With the warming temperatures, I've noticed (as I do every year) that suddenly the bike lanes are filled with people and life.  And just like every year, I'm more than a bit conflicted about this!

Part of me rejoices that there are more people cycling, and part of me is rather jealous of what the territorial part of me thinks of as "My Park" and "My Route".  This becomes nowhere more apparent to me than at the Thursday Night Social Ride.  During the summer when I first began joining the ride, it was often as large as 300 people riding at a nice, relaxed social pace.  As the weather cooled, the ride got smaller, and smaller - at the smallest, on a night where it was 40 degrees and raining there were no more than two dozen of us pedaling through the dark.  The beer at our final stops always stretched beautifully far.

But, now that spring is upon us, the ride has swelled back to over 200 people and part of me is cranky about that!  Every time I have to ride around someone pushing their bike up a hill in the middle of the pack, having trouble starting in a crowd, not signaling, holding a line, every time someone sneaks up on me from my blind spot without announcing themselves, I get annoyed.  Yet the other part of my mind remembers when I first started doing rides and getting used to the riding habits of others and tries to convince myself to relax, lest I become the cycling equivalent of a driver getting road rage.

That being said, there's a certain charm to the annual end of hibernation - for one thing, there are some COOL bikes out on the road again!

There are also some really novel ways of securing them.

I guess despite all my internal annoyance with fair-weather cyclists, the joy of cycling isn't something I can box into categories - fair weather, foul weather, newbie, and veteran, bikes are pretty forgiving of however we'd like to use them. I could probably learn something from that.