Just about a bike: Surly Steamroller [UPDATED]

4.8:1 gain ratio, 65.6 gear inches

Long before I got my Pugsley (which of all my Surly bikes ride most often these days) I got a Steamroller (and then, a little later on, I ordered a Cross Check, too). 

Mud brown, the first-generation (circa 2000) Steamroller was only sold in that color and, likewise, only as a frame-set.  

I like to imagine that I was an early-adopter of the whole fixed-gear thing.  Not true by a century or two, I know.  But still, in these parts, when I bought it way back when, there weren't very many of us riding fixed gear bikes, that's for sure.

(Because frame-set-only) I built the bike from the ground up, including the wheels (laced 'em me-self), doing what I could to emulate Rivendell's whole older-is-often-better ethos wherever I could along the way.  

Thus, I procured a few choice parts for it: high flange silver Suzue track hubs, silver Nitto B115 bars, black cotton Velox bar tape and end-plugs, a black Suntour XC stem, a black IRD seatpost, a black Chris King 1" 2-nut headset, a set of non-aero Dura Ace brakes and levers, and a set of purple Cook Bros. cranks.  

I also plus-nutted a second bottle cage mount into the downtube, mostly just because we had the jig and template for doing so at the bike shop where I was working that summer.

The Suzue singlespeed hub is a flip-flop, but I usually run it fixed, even though I almost always keep two working brakes on it. Because these days, if I ride it, I'm most likely to ride it on dirt out in the woods.  Don't care for cars.  And the truth is, two brakes are quite a bit better than one when you're riding a fixed-gear roadish bike on roadish tires on dirt.

But I rode the Steamroller on the road a lot back in the day. For a long time, it was pretty much my only "road" bike.  Centuried on it a couple times, and took it on some pretty fun, gnarly, long foresty dirt-to-pavement-to-dirt type rides, too.  We call them gravel rides now.  But back then they were just bike rides where we took the wrong bike out on a long ride and had a blast.

I hardly ever ride the Steamroller anymore.  It tends to get forgotten, gathering dust as it hangs from the ceiling in the garage. Not because I don't still love it, I do!  But because it gets flats.  Hard to get stoked on a bike that still gets flats these days... 

But, to finish off gathering content for this post, I rode the Steamroller out into the woods this afternoon, on a quick jaunt just after the rain stopped, to take a few glamour shots of her natural beauty.  'Twas lovely out and the bike was a good and solid ride on the soft wet trails.  

---

Update below...

---

UPDATE: 19 May 2021

A buddy of mine knocked-off some rad classic Surly decals, from Surly's "Eat less dirt" era.  I've affixed a set of white ones to the downtube of my Steamroller and, while I never would have believed it possible, I think the bike looks even cooler now.

Also, between back-then and now, I removed the Conti Top Tours and replaced them with a set of Panaracer RiBMo 700x32 tires that I got on spec for a review that I wrote for a friend's website years ago.  

I wasn't crazy about the RiBMos back when I first reviewed them, but they've grown on me over the years. As tires go, they're pretty cool, I guess. Definitely much bigger, lots taller anyway, than the Contis were, but, still, they're shaped kinda funny, which is hard to get used to. They come to sort of a point on the tops. This is okay when you're riding on smooth pavement, they roll really fast with minimal drag due to the smallish contact patch.  

They corner pretty well, too, I think, not that fixies take a lot of corners super hot, ya know. 

At the end of the day it's fair to say, I like them for their bigishness. I figure: there's lots of air in there, and that's good, 'cause in my world, I believe bigger is always better. Try to prove me wrong. You can't.

Plus, less flats maybe?

As far as the off-piste performance of the RiBMos (stands for Ride Bicycles More, by the way, sidewall says so) on the dirt where I usually still end up riding my Steamroller, well, ya know, they're roadish tires, so they're sketchy, they drift and dive, they wander and haphazardly careen.  

But, as all Paris-Roubaix day-racers are fond of saying, "When you have come off the cobbles on to der cowpath, and you are trying like the Hell to stay on top of your wheels in zee deep gravel, so, you know, how do you say in English, you do not end up on your ass in a cornfield, which tires you are running is very much down the list of important things you ist thinking about." 

They all say this a lot. I'm pretty sure.

So do I.