People in cold climates do weird things to survive the winter. Take for instance the Minnesota fishermen who don't let 14 inches (36cm) of ice on a frozen lake keep them from pulling lunkers up through an 8" hole. Some might say all ice fishermen do is sit around and get drunk. Well, we did our fair share of that last weekend, but we also brought my old Rat Ride 1x1 with studded tires, just for a little change of pace from the jig-n-swig. After a two-hour drive up north, we drove straight onto the ice of Lake Mille Lacs 1.5 miles (2.4km) out from shore. For any warm climate folks out there, yes, you really can drive your car on a frozen lake. We dropped our stuff in the pre-warmed fish house, cracked a beer and dropped our lines in the pre-drilled holes. It was a premo day, probably 20F (-7C) degrees and sunny. The grillmaster was cooking us something from all four meat groups. The ice was solid, but there were pressure ridges that create open water when the ice expands and cracks. I took a video while riding the Rat Ride and if you look closely, you'll see the crack with open water I rode across three times. Sketchy, but cool. This party of grumpy old men only caught three perch and two eelpout, I contributed zero. Did I care? Hell no. I was outside with a bunch of my good buddies and all I had to worry about for the next 24 hours was not dropping my beer down the hole. Brauer Power shows just how hard icefishing can be. -----

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Here's some Dummy on Dummy action for your enjoyment. The second batch of samples arrived last week, so we're all working hard to get them assembled and real-world-tested. I prefer to build my bikes at home instead of working in the Surly shop, because it's less distracting and most of my parts are sitting somewhere in my dungeonous basement shop. So I mounted the new frame onto old #1 for transport. I've found that a Dummy frame travels best when it's held onto an Xtracycle or Big Dummy bike using an Xtracycle Wideloader bar inserted through horizontal tubes of both frames…as shown. We're getting closer to production. We've got a short list of small changes to make at this point. At least one more sample must be produced and approved before we can place the Big Dummy purchase order. This is pretty typical of the pre-production development process. There are generally too many variables (tube spec, geometry, braze-on placement, etc) to design it perfectly in one shot. I chose red for my sample frameset. But we haven't chosen the production color, yet. -----

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Hey, Telly Savalas, like you told me once: "You can't corrupt it. And you know why? Because to corrupt it, you've got to show how corrupt you really are." I dig your style, man, but I got to know when you gonna show us how corrupt you are. Who loves ya baby? -----

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Patience my good people, patience. The answer to your question is "March or April." That's when a majority of our new stuff is coming in. That stuff is: the new frame colors on the appropriate models (see the frame pages for the new colors) and the two new complete bikes: the Long Haul Trucker and the Steamroller. New pages are up here (now with pictures and spec): New Completes The two things that will not be in at that time are the Big Dummy Xtracycle frame and the Mr. Whirly cranks. Those are still slated for Summer release. I know, I know, that's a long time to wait. Well, we waited a long time (in the evolutionarly or geologic sense) for donuts, and look how good that turned out. Thanks, Skip -----

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We still have some of these real purdy limited edition hubs in stock. HU1620 - Single speed disc F&R set (135mm rear) HU1621 - SS disc rear only HU1622 - Fixie F&R set (120mm rear. Fixie threads one side, SS threads other side) Get 'em. Got 'em? Good. -----

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