I would concur on the Urbane Cyclist (UC) frame. I bought one and love it. The UC is a great shop to work with and will work with you to build a bike using their parts, your parts, whatever you want. I'm getting a custom frame made since I am very long in the body, if you want a 58 Urbane Tourist (UT) let me know.

The UT has a number of advantages and differences relative to the Surly, I was told they are made in the same factory, but I don't know for sure. The UT is a little less crazy heavy. I was travelling with 300 pounds on the bike and found it gave me no problems. It is hard to imagine a road tour that it would be underbuilt for, yet it doesn't have some of the heavy features of the LHT. This seems to explain the ride quality of the UT. There are also minor fit and finish differences which may appeal, and wheel size issues. I should also say the UC wheels have yet to go out of true even a feather, after 1100 miles, which for me is sufficient reason to buy from them if you are going the distance and don't build your own wheels.

One thing I would have bought the Surly for alone (based on the specs, riding the UT sold me on the UT) is the powdercoat finish. The new paint doesn't look like PC, I haven't been able to verify.

I was actually planing on buying the Surly anyway after my tour was over, and the Nashbar frame. It's not so much in the bucks department, and I hoped to do a definitive review of the three frames, with the same components. In the end I loved the UT and felt the only thing that really needed changing was that I need a custom fit frame... If I was an off the rack kind of cyclist I would have carried on with my plan to get the other frames for testing. I found spicercycles.com very supportive of sending frames to Canada, and they sell the Surly frame for 350ish.