Well heres my Surly Disc Trucker

Well ive been riding my new disc trucker for around a month now. Its starting to mold into an awesome bike. You know those little teething problems when you first build a bike. Different adjustments, parts etc that you find under your bed and think i should fit that knowing all to well that you didn’t like it the first time and that’s why its under the bed.

Well how does it ride. For me it rides just like my LHT comfy, steady and just all round awesome. I love riding my other surlys and thats why this one was born. Obviously the main development is the fact that it runs disc brakes. Im running tektro cable discs at the moment and with a correct tweek they can be awesome. Again it takes a bit but my god it can stop as i found out when day dreaming the other day. The discs do make a massive difference especially as this is more commuter than touring bike (as i already have a lht) and the fact that as living in the UK half my journeys are on damp roads and if its not damp its raining. Would i recommend this bike over the standard Lht? Well i would as long as u don’t mind a bit of tweeking of cable brakes. If you run flat bars like me you could go hydraulic and that means no adjustments until pads are needed. And that’s the point canti pads are available every where but disc pads are not. Bring on the day when a standard pad is invented for disc brakes.

Ramble over! Heres some pics

Tarp tent arrival

As i mentioned in the last quick update im off in a matter of weeks for a bike packing adventure in Australia. I decided that this trip would be different from my others as it is mainly off road and that i wanted to go as light as possible. This should hopefully make the ride more enjoyable and a lot less taxing on the bike.

I normally tour with a wild country duolite 2 man tent. Its light at 2kg and reasonably small packing but i wanted to take this to a whole new level. I found tarp tent by following a few other blogs. I opted for the contrail 1 man tent as it light at 0.7kg and packs into 36×10 cm roll. Its awesome fits right into the top compartment of my frame bag. I put it up for the first time yesterday and its surprisingly spacious, easy to put up (they reckon under two minutes) The only things that i will quibble is that it was quite windy and there was a bit of flex in the pole and the things so light that it was hard to fold as it kept trying to take off. But anyway here are a few pics. I will add more as the trip progresses.