I'd love to take a week off every month and go camping somewhere, but it's not possible with my work and family responsibilities. I have, however, found a way to keep my out-of-doors skills sharp and use some of my camping gear....The bike-camping overnighter. On Saturday, I rode 36km to the Arrowhead 135 Survivors Party in White Bear Lake, a suburb of the Twin Cities. Not wanting to ride home after the gathering because of the forecast of impending thundershowers, I packed to camp out after the shindig instead of riding all the way home in the rain and stream…

Surly Employee of the Month One of the behind-the-scenes guys here at Surly for the last 7 years was Josh "Yafro" Yablon. As head engineer, he designed almost every Surly frameset, as well as many of the other products. He had a hand in almost everything we've ever produced and helped us all with the intricacies of engineering, design and manufacturing. Aside from the geeky stuff, he was always been one to banter about anything, be it politics or punk rock. But all good things must come to an end. He accepted a position as engineer for Fox Racing Shocks…

Product ETAs Boring boring ETAs, I know, you want a trip report from Japan last week. That'll have to wait until we compile our photos. Soon, my pretties, soon. Until then, here is what is coming in stock soon. Steamroller complete bikes- Maroon/Chocolate color, all sizes in stock today or tomorrow.Cross-Check framesets- Misty Mountain Grey color, all sizes except 62cm in stock now. 62cm coming this summer.Cross-Check complete bikes- Misty Mountain Grey color, all sizes except 50 and 52cm coming early April. 50 and 52cm should be ready mid-April.Pacer framesets- Silver Bullet color, 42, 54, 56 and 58cm in stock…

Surly vs. Godzilla You might have heard we were in Japan for the past couple of weeks. Or you might have thought we were dead, as the blog was not maintained while we were away. Anyway, we went to Japan, thought about kicking Godzilla's ass, but in the end were won over by the sadness in his misunderstood gaze. We damn fell in love with the little guy, truth be told. There will be long blog reports posted in the coming week(s), but we are all now trying to catch up on all the stuff we didn't get done while…

Big Dummy Progress It's looking more like August until we'll see the Big Dummy here in stock. Why? We originally had one single prototype built before the Interbike tradeshow in October. This bike ended up getting ridden by Dave and myself for about 6-8 weeks before we decided to make some changes. Dave is still putting huge miles on this 1st proto, despite t-boning a car and raking the headtube a few months ago. Those changes ended up on the second round of prototypes, which we started riding in January. Having 8 prototypes altogether, there were enough to go around…