All I wanted for Christmas... was to stop barfing. Yep, got me a good case of the old stomache flu / food poisoning / attempted-murder-by-radioactive-doping over the holiday weekend. Pretty much thought I was going to die. I even willed all of my freaky tall bikes (not tallbikes, just tall bikes) to Snacky. I think I barfed out some key brain cells though, because now I find myself using words that, while close to what I mean, are not quite on the mark. For example, aw hell, I can't think of any examples. But trust me, it's like my brain…

The front tire on the Big Dummy started going flat on the way into the office on Tuesday. It had a slow leak, so I was able to pump it up a couple times during the ride, instead of stopping to replace the tube en route. When I got to the office, I removed the wheel to replace the tube, and I figured I might as well install an Endomorph tire (a discontinued 30tpi Band-Aid brown-wall unit) on the wheel as long as the Pug fork was already installed. The larger tire will add a bit more cushion and, hopefully,…

I had the steering geometry of the Big Dummy radically adjusted for me, yesterday morning, by a Minneapolis motorist in her late-model Chevy Monte Carlo. Ms. Smith ran a red light driving north on Nicollet just as I entered the intersection on green (going west on 60th St.), to make a left turn south on Nicollet. The Big Dummy and I T-boned her car hard enough to bend the fork from 45mm of offset to –5mm or so. Plus, it bent sideways and twisted. The handlebar and stem twisted 90 degrees from the impact, but I managed to keep the…

Surly Theatrea subsidiary of Fly By Night IndustriespresentsThis One Time, Me'n These GuysAn Ongoing Drama Time: The morning after, & way too early. Scene: The poor man's party pit down by the river. Empty cans are strewn about and the fire has burned down to lukewarm ash. There are several lumps in sleeping bags scattered about, and bikes hanging from trees. T-Boy is curled up by the fire, shivering in denim print lycra shorts, a silver faux-fur shrug, and a Colnago cycling cap. Flasky, after a restless collapse into dreamless sleep a few hours earlier, creaks open his lid... Flasky:…

I've been riding an Electra 24 x 3.0 slick tire in the Big Dummy fork, with the 26 x 2.35 Schwalbe Supermoto on the back, for a week to experiment with a decrease in trail and increase in front tire volume. I did like the increased tire volume on the front for a bit more suspension and larger ground contact patch. But I still wanted more boing and more traction. In preparation for snow (we still don't have any, but eventually it will find us), Big Dummy got another front-end mod this weekend. I swapped in a 1x1 fork (with…