Seems that ever since mounting the 52mm Compass Rat Trap Pass tires on my Surly Trucker DeLuxe on Labor Day, accidents of the clock, calendar, and travel have limited my time on it to short rides, mostly at night, mostly on the Minuteman, and entirely on pavement. I've been curious about how this bike-and-tire combination would handle in other settings: longer rides, climbing beyond rail-trail grades, broken pavement, roots, rocks, gravel, sand, dirt, etc. Had a few daylight hours free yesterday, and put together a
38-mile route out the Minuteman, continuing out the unpaved Reformatory Branch, then riding an on-road arc over rolling hills through Concord, Carlisle, and Billerica to connect to the Billerica end of the mostly-stone-dust Narrow Gauge Rail, following that back to Depot Park, and then on to the Minuteman and home. This little ride got me a useful gamut of surfaces, including genuinely harsh pavement encountered at speed on Route 4 and Dudley Road, and helped inform my mind and body about what the Monster Trucker is capable of, what can be depended on, a learning process that will continue as I take this bike out into the world.
I did check, as requested by SBP: the Egg is still gone, but the Giant Space Crabs are still not gone.
The segment of the Minuteman, between Bedford Street, Lexington, and Wiggins Ave., Bedford, has been repaved, is open again, and is a delight to ride. HOWEVER... in this segment, there are runs of pavement that have a sharp drop-off of several inches to the surrounding dirt: hit that obliquely, especially at night, and down you go... a new failure mode for the old rail trail.
rod