Surly moonlander Update; back on the coast!

Note; to date i have never seen sinking sands in Aberlady Bay!, and lived here all my life, knee deep soft wet sand around gliderpole stumps if your lucky!, some drama nonsense on social media to blame!, nonsense!

So i started riding the big Surly Moonlander again just before the Corona Apocalypse started,
1st reason doing so is to not use my 2 good bikes - the Surly Wednesday and New Pugsley 2.0 on the coast and end up with all my bikes trashed cosmeticly with salt water exposure,

The Surly Wednesday is my mountain bike with 29+ wheels, suspension fork and dropper post...
The Surly Pugsley 2.0 my All day Trail Bike and Bikepacking rig with 29+ wheels...

Coastal salt water abuse;
I have changed my value of a bike nowadays for trashing on the coast and don`t want to use a bike with a value of much more than £600, it is more important the bike is set up  prepped properly and ideally tyres set up tubeless to avoid pinch flats when running real low tyre pressures for soft sand and then grip on real greasy rocks exposed at low tide...

2nd reason to do so is that the Moonlander is just such a good bike on on real soft sand as has the widest available rim - 100mm  and widest tyres - 5" and combined with a bombproof 135mm rear Hope Pro 2 hub (same as the Orange Pugsley for keeping spares) makes for a good rig. The bike does not have the huge wide rear end of all other 5" tyre fatbikes and the small Shimano Zee rear mech is neatly tucked in out the way making it good on rocks, along with the bash guard on the Middleburn RS7 crank arms - why do new crank sets not allow bash guards to be fitted? - i`m sure it`s not just me that rides rocks?!!!

More Tweaks;
I recently added a Microshift thumb shifter to the 1x10 speed group set i fitted last year and in the last week improved the bike adding a bit more cockpit room with a jtek layback seat post that is under £30 from SKS Cycles and after some measuring replaced the 165mm square taper bottom bracket with a 155mm BB which was £19 on eBay...

Fatboy slim - for a 5" fatbike!,
This is ace now as i have removed the huge wide effect BB which all 5" tyre Fatbikes have and the BB is now only 5MM wider each side than a Pugsley or other 4" tyre Fatbike...

Since these pics were taken i added a 2mm spacer on the drive side on the BB to make the crank arm to chain stay clearance gap the same...

New and old- 1x 10 with with clutch mech and thumb shifter, then a triple spider on the crank allows a 22t bail out granny ring and a bash guard for rock crawling - Retrotastic!...

Pump and tool bag from G, this is a neat design and swaps quickly between bikes with velcro with just the size of tube needed for each bike...

Along with the black and orange Pugsley these are my go to Beachbikes now...

More soon...

Isolation Cycle 8; Hedderwick sands and woods...

A loop around JMP with G, it was away from Belhaven beach and it`s `Bridge to Nowhere` was real quiet with just a few walkers inland in the woods at JMP,  the coast here  is good to go to and you can keep away from folk, safe too with no gates to touch either...

Through the woods near Fox Lake...

Field prepared ready for potato planting...

A look down in the mud banks of the Hedderwick burn and some Otter tracks...

Nice hours cycle and feel better for it once back to G`s HQ...
We film, Song is `Funeral Pyre` by Mogwai


Isolation Cycle 8; April 2020 from coastkid71 on Vimeo.


More soon...

Isolation Cycle 7; Peffersands...

Another solo to Tyninghame and another lovely morning, tracks on the wet sand revealed there was a horse on the beach and it soon came into view as it was cantering up and down the low tide line...

A lovely sight and we exchanged greetings as both enjoyed an empty beach...

Was a stunning morning and i soaked up the isolation now the horse rider had left and just the noise of waves and seabirds now...

These Anti Glider poles from WW2 have recently been exposed, their clean concrete free of algae and barnacles show these have been buried for years,  Always stuff reappearing along the coast in the sands moved by tides...

 Fatbike tyres leaving less of a footprint than humans...

Wee film... waves and horse cantering for music


Isolation Cycle 7; April 2020 from coastkid71 on Vimeo.

More soon...

Isolation Cycle 6; Ravensheugh Beach...

Solo cycle again today early around Tyninghame woods and along the beach at Ravensheugh, and it was surreal how quiet it was, there was a dog and it`s owners footprints on the beach from an earlier visitor but i saw no one in an hour ere or when i cycled home...

Never seen anything like this and i found it really isolating indeed...

Nature was all around, birds etc, but no one else...
Very Apocalyptic but loving the isolation of no one around it has to be said...

Wee film,
Song is `Wider Than The Sky` by Quantic


Isolation Cycle 6; April 2020 from coastkid71 on Vimeo.

More soon...

Original Surly Pugsley Update; back in action!....

My original Surly Pugsley - Scotlands 1st Fatbike...
You can read how i came across this type of bike in this blog post Here...
After 11 years  and over 12,000 miles hard use it was restored and went into the loft...
Then this year with so much changing i decided why keep bikes you don`t ride?,

A bug bear of mine is people who keep vintage motorbikes and not ride them, keeping them as an investment... Bikes should be ridden and not hidden...
And so i have sold all my non Surly bikes including the Prototype Genesis Fatbike to Girlfriend G and with only the Patient Zero Pug left up there i thought why not use my 6th bike in my collection and use it as Surly intended?...

With swappable wheels and quick release hubs, and hand adjustable Surly chain tug chain tensioner, the original Surly Pugsley was designed to be able to be set up with quick swap of wheels to change single speed  ratio`s and it makes sense to do this easy mod with the spares i have and make another bke set up option to cycle...


So out the loft with it and it was into the Man-Cave...

Took under a minute to snip the cable ties and unbolt the front and rear mechs and remove gear shifters...

Then removing the right hand crank removed the chainrings...

Then Cassette...

Threading the lot through the chain and re joining the quick link to keep it all together it can be used in the future on another Surly build..

Another box of spares contains an Alfine hub and drive line spares along with some singlespeed kits....

Here a complete single speed 32 x 18 tooth ratio including Chain Tug tensioner i used for SSUK2017..

I fitted the 18t single speed onto the rear hub...

And then the 32t Surly Stainlass Steel chainring onto the crank...

Keeping the Truvativ Bash Guard natch...

Then with the 20 tooth on the front wheel to give two useable options i fitted that to the rear...

With the wheel as forward as possible with the 20 tooth - to use on soft sand, i then ftted the the 18 tooth wheel which was is tensioned quickly and easily with the tool free surly Chain tug...

Up and rolling singlespeed with 18t for trails and roads and a quick easy tool free swap to 20t when needed on the coast, a great  idea by Surly...

Great to get out again soon on the old Pugsley...

Next day i did so with a cycle to Tyninghame...

Been a long time since there has been original Endomorph tracks along the east coast...

Happy days...

Back home and with other Pugsley wheels and tyres i laced up another pair of offset Surly Large Marge rims and again fitted a single speed  20t and 18t sprocket...

And a pair of new unused Surly Black Floyd slick tyres i have had a while...

Big Fat Moto wheels to use once some disc rotors arrive,
Good to use up stuff which would just be lying about  unused...

A week of high pressure blue skies forecasted,  will tidy up the garden and get in an hour cycle in the afternoons...

More soon...