You Big Dummy

May 19, 2015

The thing about deciding to ride across America with your dog is that you then have to figure out how to ride across America with your dog. No matter how long the legs, how great the energy, or how big the heart, no dog can walk or run alongside as you pedal through towns and cities, over mountain passes, and through thunderstorms and heat waves. Even with the most ideal road and weather conditions and the most capable dog, anything beyond fifteen miles in a day becomes a clear-cut case of animal cruelty. Dogs just aren't built for that kind of thing. And for a small dog like Walter the threshold is lower still.

This means that you have to haul the dog yourself. Most people solve the problem by using a trailer. With a trailer, all you have to do is attach a hitch to the rear axle, connect the tow bar to the hitch, and you're off and running. It's simple. But the cost for simple is twenty to thirty pounds of extra weight even before you add the dog, two more points of rolling resistance, an extra set of wheels and tires and tubes that can fail, more strain on the rear wheel and axle, and half a dozen bits of attachment hardware that could fall apart out in the middle of nowhere.

Because Walter is so small, I chose to avoid all of that by going with expensive over simple. A long-tail cargo bicycle has a stretched frame that allows hundreds of pounds of gear to be stacked on and draped from the long rack that sits above the back tire. This lets it avoid most of the added hardware and weight of a trailer. It also feels more like riding a normal bicycle. The challenge is that there aren't many diamond frame-style cargo bikes to choose from in the first place. And of those, only one has the combination of carrying capacity, reasonable weight, and twenty-six-inch wheels that made sense for the kind of long-distance, dog-hauling touring bike I wanted. This is how I came to own a brand-new Surly Big Dummy.

I wanted to build the Big Dummy up from the frame, but I didn't have the time or tools in Los Angeles to make that happen. Instead I picked up a complete bike from a shop in Santa Monica and swapped out the bits that wouldn't work for touring. Because cargo bikes have to stand up to a lot of abuse even if they never leave the city, most of the components didn't need changing.

The Big Dummy still has its stock 36-hole Alex Adventurer rims paired to DT Swiss Champion spokes and Shimano Deore M529 disc hubs front and back. It has TruVativ FireX C3.1 forged aluminum cranks mounted on a 68mm bottom bracket; Shimano Deore M591 front and rear derailleurs paired to Shimano Deore M590 shifters; a 9-speed Shimano HG-61 11-34 cassette; a SRAM PC-971 chain; a Cane Creek 40 threadless headset; Avid BB7 disc brakes in the front and the back, each with 180mm rotors; and Avid FR-5 brake levers. All of this is built around a 4130 CroMoly steel frame and fork. A Surly-brand Big Dummy Deck sits on top of Big Dummy Rails that mount into posts welded into the frame.

The bike also came with a kickstand. Yep, I'm one of those people now.

I still made a number of changes to make the thing good for long-distance touring. To try and save my knees from total destruction I swapped the stock 48-36-26 crankset for a 44-32-22 setup. I brought over the Brooks saddle and Velo Orange seatpost from my Novara Randonee. I added a Casey's Crazy Bar from Velo Orange to give myself more handlebar positions and paired it with a short-rise stem for a more upright riding posture. The bike now has Schwalbe Marathon Mondial 26 x 2.15 folding tires to help avoid the puncture and wear problems that followed me across Australia all winter. (The Continental Town & Country 26 x 2.1 tires that came with the Big Dummy are now on Kristen's bike, which otherwise hasn't changed from our last trip.) SKS Commuter II 60mm fenders, a Nite Rider Lumina 500 headlight, Cateye Velo 7 cycling computer, four water bottle cages, and some kind of blinking red tail light round out the updates.

The bags that came with the bike are terrible for touring. They expand outward to carry a decent amount of gear, but only at the top. That gives them a narrow V shape instead of the square-like cavern of a pannier. This is made worse by the fact that the sides aren't enclosed near the top. It means that anything not packed tight into place could slip out if I run over a big enough bump. And although the bags have covers designed to help repel water, they do this in much the same way as an umbrella. It means that unless everything is aligned just so, gaps in the cover will allow rain to slip inside. By the time you're able to reach camp a few hours down the road your gear will be soaked.

I tried to make the bags work because I'd paid for them as part of buying the complete bike. I wanted to get good use out of them. But whenever I spent more than a few minutes screwing around with bags, all I could think about is how they were worse than panniers in every possible way. And so I created a mounting system for the rails of the rack that will let my four yellow Ortlieb panniers come with me on the road this summer. It's a simple setup that uses only U bolts, rubber-padded P clamps, and a bunch of hex nuts. The panniers latch onto the downward-facing bolts just as they would to the rails of a normal bicycle rack, while the steadying hooks on the back side of the panniers grab on to a part of the frame that arcs over the hub and cassette.

To my surprise and complete joy, this system worked straight off. With a few minor adjustments to the alignment of the the pannier latches and hooks, all of the parts slid in place and stayed there, solid and true. I'm not a mechanical person, not in any sense of the term. I've never changed the oil in any of my cars. I have a hard time putting Ikea furniture together the right way. If I had to rewire anything I'd electrocute myself within eight seconds. Bike repairs drive me to the edge of madness on a regular basis. And yet somehow I managed to piece this critical piece of touring hardware together in my head and then turn it into reality. It's the closest I've come in my life so far to experiencing what a miracle feels like.

The most important takeaway from everything I just wrote is that I have no idea how any of this will work once we're off and running. I put less than a hundred miles on the bike before we had to ship it off to the East Coast. Walter has been on several rides, but nothing longer than about fifteen miles. It's unknown how he'll react to the days and weeks and months on the road that are coming. And although it seems like the setup of the Big Dummy will work for cross-country touring, it's never been on anything longer than a day ride. I haven't even pedaled the thing with a full load yet. There hasn't been time.

But I can't say I'm all that worried. We plan to ride low-mile days to start. It's easier to get replacement parts in America than the vast hinterlands of Western Australia. And unlike our last trip there are no flights to catch at the end and no visa exit requirements to worry about, so we can travel at whatever pace feels right. If it works, it works. If it doesn't, we'll adjust. If we adjust and continue to fail then we'll pack up and come home and buy a sailboat or something. We want a life of adventure, but you can't have a life of adventure without risk. We're ready to deal with whatever might fall our way.

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