Surly Cross Check Bits and a Sewing Project

For quite a while I’ve had in mind the idea for a chunky drop-bar tourer, something burlier – stiffer and fatter-tyred (2.25″-2.5″) than my old Cross Check, and with all the appropriate ‘barnacles’; primarily with a view to taking on some longer tours in the mountains of Europe of the kind that involve great trails but also long stretches of asphalt and smoother gravel, on which my 29+ ECR becomes somewhat tedious for more than a day or two, but also because “bicycles”.

While it feels like the major players in the bike world are collectively losing their minds in the endless quest for more profit, happily there is a growing corner in which people like myself and my friends can exist in a utopia of  lower cost, super durable, simple, and interesting bicycles

I wasn’t particularly keen to drop lots of cash on such a project and had mentally parked it until such time as I felt ‘ready’, however when a mate put his Fairlight Faran frameset up for sale I sensed an opportunity and grabbed it.. they don’t appear on the used market much at all, and being my size it was too good an opportunity to miss. That was a few months ago, and since then I’ve slowly been accumulating a bunch of parts of the rugged, no-nonsense, low-tech flavour that I like, including stuff out of my parts bin, and swiped from my old Cross Check, which is kind of the reason for revisiting that bike now.

Over the last couple of years that latter has settled into a comfortable mid-life as a reliable all-weather, all-road, all-day mile muncher with fat-ish slicks and mudguards permanently fitted. Given the perpetually wet climate and terrible state of the roads now, after years of cuts and neglect, it’s been enormously useful in this role all year round instead of only during the winter months, having previously been run with knobbies and no mudguards in summer. For the past 10 years it has been fitted with a Middleburn ‘Incy’ crank setup , as detailed here, a 58/110bcd double with 22 and 38T rings, which combined with an 11-28 or 11-32 rear cassette gave me a terrific gear range with almost no-overlap. On road however the inner 22T ring had become mostly redundant and it was, to all intents and purposes, being ridden as 1×9 setup. Wanting to reproduce that gear range on the Faran I figured I could swipe the spider from the Cross Check, and in its place fit a 110bcd double run with a single ring. That was the plan, then this happened…

The spider has not been made for some years, and BETD, who bought the rights to Middleburn after their bankruptcy, have no plans to re-introduce. That’s down to not having any drawings, and the cost of starting from scratch being considered prohibitive in light of the tiny niche that such a setup occupies in the modern cycling context (of super-wide 52T cassettes and 12spd derailleurs). I’d been looking, via various channels, for a spare secondhand one for a year or so prior to this with a view to probably wanting to use such a setup elsewhere, but failed miserably. It seems they are as rare as the proverbial chicken molars. The Faran will likely end up with a standard 94bcd double spider with 30-40T rings and a 11-40 rear cassette (10 speed as I have an SLX rear mech and some bar end shifters kicking around that could do with a home). In the meantime however, as a 1×9, I’m of course still very happy with the Cross Check. That, combined with my old Kona Paddy Wagon fixed wheel winter hack meet all of my cycling needs at this time of year, and given their simplicity and durability feel like the perfect ‘no consequence’ bicycles for churning out the miles in the endless rain, mud, grit, and occasionally salt, of a typical winter.

It’s a feeling, occasionally smug, that is reinforced almost every day I am out navigating through the gloom. Before Christmas I came across a guy on his high end road bike, stranded out in the lanes, in the rain. I always have tools on board so stopped to see if I could help.. nope, his Shimano Di2 electronic shifting had had a fit and frozen solid in such a way that his bike was apparently unrideable.. I imagine some water had got in somewhere, and there was nothing for him to do but phone home for a rescue, meanwhile freezing his nuts off for the wait. Shimano like to promote Di2 on the basis that…

“comprised of small junctions, wires, batteries, and mechanical units, Shimano Di2 looks and feels like a simple system, but it’s packed with intricate functions and leading-edge technology. The Di2 platform is complex with many important pieces that must work seamlessly together to achieve Shimano’s hallmark precise shift action“.

An associate pointed out that it instead sounds very much like a list of excellent reasons for not having electronic shifting on your bike :-) SRAM’s offering wouldn’t be any different. As an aside I kind of feel it’s a shame that the traditional winter trainer seems to have fallen out of fashion. I also noticed that Shimano is working to bring AI-enabled shifting to market such that it’s no longer even necessary to shift gears for yourself. While it feels like the major players in the bike world are collectively losing their minds in the endless quest for more profit, happily there is a growing corner in which people like myself and my friends can exist in a utopia of  lower cost (mostly…), super durable, simple, and interesting bicycles kept alive by manufacturers such as Microshift, BETD, White Industries, Rivendell, DiaCompe, and others.. plus of course eBay, that continue to offer lots of opportunity for satisfying fiddling and fettling :-)

Anyway, enough of that.. the camera bag I mentioned. A couple of years ago I knocked together a waist pack for my camera, built around a padded insert I already had, that holds my trusty old X-Pro 2 body and a couple of small primes. It’s been great and is still going strong despite being used pretty much everywhere, including Kyrgyzstan a few months ago. The one thing I regretted not thinking about at the time was making room in the bag for other bits and pieces in addition to the camera insert, and maybe a phone and set of keys.

Now, wet winter weekends are perfect for fiddling about repairing and making gear for the upcoming season so I figured it was time I revisited the camera bag. I didn’t particularly feel like spending any additional ££ so used what I had, hence the slight mismatch of dark and light greens and black. The body is made from a medium weight waterproof nylon; it might prove not to be particularly durable over the long-haul, but it’s what I had kicking around. The body is still built around the same camera insert but is shaped to provide internal pockets at each end, large enough for some snacks, lightweight windshell, wallet, spare batteries etc, and has an additional zipped internal pocket for spare SD cards, or a credit card for ex. I’ve decided that I’ll use it for a few months and see what I don’t like, or realise could be better, and then make myself a fancy version in X-Pac perhaps, and give this one to a mate. I had thought about doing a “how to make” article on here but then bikepacking.com got in touch asking me if I would do such an article for them; I figure it’ll be more useful to people over there given the vast global reach of that site, so I’ll post the link when I get around to it… stay tuned!