[ Manvel, Texas, USA ]
Dearest Transglobalistas—
It has been a looooong year’s worth of shelter-in-place bubbles, quarantines, isolation and cabin fever, COVID tests (always negative), inactivity, workaholism, Zoom meetings, my first sailing adventure, and a long-awaited vaccination. Far too long. The time has arrived to crawl out from under my sedentary rock and get back to the business of transglobalizing ™.
Cautiously, of course.
Early tomorrow morning I’ll take a flight from Houston to Los Angeles, hitch a ride to Death Valley with an old friend, and subsequently ride my bicycle along a 2,500 mile route back to the thriving metropolis of Manvel in the Great State of Texas.
More deets will follow about that route and ride, but this post is all about the bike. “And what bike is that?” you may be asking. I’m glad you asked. The bike in question is my first brand-new, two-wheeled purchase since 2001, twenty years ago; it is my absolutely not lean but very very mean machine, a 2021 Surly Wednesday fatbike.
It’s a very different experience buying a touring machine after twenty years of experience touring all over the world. It’s easier (you know just what you want, and what simply doesn’t work), and it’s harder (you know just what you want, and what simply doesn’t work); but for sure you’ll know it when you see it.
And a Surly fatbike–either a Pugsley or a Wednesday–was it. I saw it and I knew. (Yes, you’re right: the model names are the kids from the Addams Family. Why? Dunno. Cool choice? Most definitely.) After calling (almost literally) every single Surly dealer in the United States of America, I finally found a Wednesday in my frame size…in faraway Fargo, North Dakota.
Three days, a few phone calls, one payment and a once-in-a-generation Texas winter power outage later, the bike was mine!
Transglobalistas, meet Fargo.
Fargo, welcome to the team.
Namaste,
—jim
PS
Thanks to Craig Benson and the folks at Paramount Sports for the great build and great service.
