Surly Troll

At SaddleDrive this week, Surly reintroduced two of their classics — each completely overhauled with a few very interesting features. We had a chance to look them over and take a few rides… here are our initial impressions.

Need extra water capacity for a big bikepacking trip? Here’s a hack to add two additional bottle cages using Surly’s do-all, horizontal slot dropouts—tested on rough tracks in East Africa.

Created with classic styling, this longflap saddlebag is like a Frankensatchel, timeless waxed canvas cobbled with modern materials and a few extra useful features.

A quick post showing the final Africa setup for ‘Steve’, as Virginia named her blue Troll, which I think she came up with so she could boldly announce, ‘My ass hurts, must’ve been that long ride on Steve.’

Steve has been a trustworthy and tough steed that has now been on two international tours. He has a few scratches and dings, but still looks sharp.

Surly never ceases to amaze by putting out new bikes that I immediately need. They just released two really cool rigs that fill various niche gaps in their steel frame lineup. In this post, we’ll have a quick peek at the ECR and Straggler as well as explore their nonpareil, adventure-specific lineup.

I decided to enjoy this creamy honey-colored IPA while breaking down my Surly Troll. So I put the green long-haul tank up on the work stand and started the chore of pulling it apart to purge its nooks and crannies of gunk and corrosion (and repurpose my Rohloff to a new build).

Listed below is what I had on my 5-month tour of Mexico and Central America. This is hardly a minimalist kit, but it carried me through some cold nights in the high altitudes of Mexico and Guatemala as well as some ridiculously hot days in Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama.

After our Nicoya bike adventure we tore through the remainder of Costa Rica and most of Panama in 13 days with merely 2 rest days in between…

We recently heard rumblings about a must-ride ‘extra’ to the typical southward bound pan-american cycling route: an eighty-some-odd mile figure-eight around the double-volcano island of Ometepe in the southern freshwater sea of Lago de Nicaragua.

A short post about our rides through Nicaragua… so far. Now, we’re off to Isla de Omotepe… more to come.

Bike Touring Nerdery