Due to lack of fitness I had to cancel our plans for doing the Route des Grandes Alpes on the Big Dummy this year. Instead, we did a relaxed 6 day slope from Austria to northern Italy, visiting the Adriatic sea and back via Slovenia.
Day 1 (Villach – Osoppo)
It started out with some short 25km from home to the train station at horrific weather. Riding exposed to a heavy thunderstorm, fighting strong head wind and massive rain was kind of bad start. However, when reaching Villach by train through continuous extraordinary rain, it started to light up slowly. After a while the rain stopped and we rode to Tarvisio at dry conditions. It even became sunny that day and we were happy when arriving at our hotel in Osoppo.
Day 2 (Osoppo – Caorle)
A sunny and relaxed ride along the Tagliamento river passing several sleepy little towns with nice bars. We found some Bed&Breakfast accomodation where we slept in a rolling home. In the evening we took a bath in the Adriatic sea at Caorle beach and had our dinner in a good fish restaurant in the beautiful center of Caorle.
Day 3 (Caorle – Grado)
Going along the Caorle Laguna via San Gaetano and finding some route nearmost to the sea, we passed by Aquileia and stayed at some Hotel at Grado.
Day 4 (Grado – San Pietro al Natisone)
After leaving Grado, we visited the archaeological excavations of Aquileia and spent some time there. Then we went to Palmanova and Cividale, two awesome cities. In Cividale we took a bath in the river Natisone. Along the beautiful Natisone we rode on direction Pulfero and Slovenia and stopped at San Pietro al Natisone. At dinner, we had a special dessert: Gubana, some dry cake fully soaked with Grappa. Cheers. Ouch.
Day 5 (San Pietro al Natisone – Paternion)
From San Pietro we went to Slovenia passing by Kobarid and Bovec, heading towards the Passo Predil. It was steady uphill all the time. From Passo Predil we went down back to Italy and finished at Villach Austria, where we departed. From now on I was on my own and took the Drautal bikeway to Paternion, where I found a nice and cheap accomodation.
Day 6 (Paternion – Golling)
I wanted to get home in one day. 197km and two hard climbs. First climb, the Katschberg pass, was probably the hardest uphill ever with my Big Dummy. Continuous slope of up to 21% for probably 500m of elevation with my 8 speed internal hub and all the baggage was a killer. With some intentional photo and water breaks I did it, but I was exhausted. Next uphill to Obertauern was relaxed, compared to the former one. From Obertauern I went down to Radstadt and rode on direction Salzburg. After 157km and probably 2000m of elevation I decided to take a train and a bus for the final 40km, since the extreme hot weather all over sudden changed into nasty headwind and heavy thunderstorms.
Conclusion
After all, the Big Dummy and the Alfine drive train once more proved reliable for touring. No problems at all. Also, I was very pleased with the Snafu Knob Job tires that worked well for both paved and gravel roads. The mobile power plant as mentioned in previous articles worked flawlessly. The dynohub power supply kept my GPS operational all 6 days without any outage and without use of internal batteries. Even at slow uphill passages without sufficient dynohub feed the Powertank was durable enough to last on.
Today was my first test ride for the new power supply device chain: new dynohub SON 20R, JaWeTec Bikecharger, SwissBatteries PowerTank M, Garmin Oregon GPS without internal batteries, Schmidt Edelux lights playing all together. I did some short slope of probably 45km with some 1300m of elevation. Most of the uphills were too slow to keep the bikecharger charging the Powertanks internal battery, so I switched it off at uphills and let the Powertank drive the GPS on its own. At first image those two Powertank LEDs are visible. A red one indicating charging state and a blue one indicating some device at USB out consuming power.
With such short ride I could not enforce any power outage and I could not determine whether the GPS would empty the Powertank quicker than it could be recharged by the bikecharger. No problems today. The Garmin GPS ran continuously without internal batteries, performing routing, showing maps, trip computer and several other jobs permanently. No power saving mode, but no backlight, though.
Charging of the Powertank starts at less than 10km/h with the SON 20R dynohub. As soon as speed goes further down, one should consider switching off the bikecharger to protect the Powertank from those remaining slow pulses at DC out of the bikecharger no longer being able to provide constant voltage from dynohub out.
There is one more interesting experience: with the SON 20R there is no need to switch on the lights when reaching speed of 50km/h to protect the bikecharger from dynohub overvoltage. Actually the charger would switch off itself automatically for that reason. I had to take care about this when using the stronger SON 28S dynohub.
On the other hand, I found out, as soon as switching on the lights, there is not enough power to charge the powertank, no matter how fast I am riding. With my previous installation it looked as like there was enough power left to charge the GPS even when lights would shine, but there definitely is not. The Powertanks red LED will not even flash slowly with lights switched on. So that was not a very good idea, anyway. Something that I will no longer pay any attention to.
Finally some words on installation and weight: the whole collection of USB devices and cables including GPS but without dynohub and lights makes up 342g. See third image. Installation looks some kind of messy at the moment, but everything will be protected by some small bag mounted at top tube. At final stage there will by two wires from the top tube bag to handlebar and the GPS at the handlebar. Should look quite clean. Need to get appropriate bag.
Robert from Ohio/USA, riding a Big Dummy at home, contacted me some months ago, announcing his visit to Austria. He was going to move to Salzburg for some longer period of time, visiting his Salzburg family and thinking about getting another Big Dummy frame over here, just bringing his parts with him, since he did not want to stay without a big dummy cycle (yes, that is quite an issue).
Today Robert emailed me about his arrival in Austria and it turned out he had taken the whole thing with him: “Yes, I ‘m now back in Salzburg and have brought my BD with me as extra baggage for $200 dollars (about 150euro) as this was the most appropriate method (cheapest) rather than shipping just the parts and buying a frame over here.”
See Roberts pictures how to airmail a complete big dummy bicycle. 200$ is not that much, especially keeping in mind, that I once had to pay EUR 300(!!!) for shipping some small package with bicycle parts from Taiwan to Austria.
He also states: “I would be very glad to have an article in your blog about having the 2nd BD in Austria, in fact I have been looking forward to this since your first email.”
I am happy to drop in this article. Actually, I am not really sure whether there are only two Big Dummy bicycles in Austria (I realize, one of my E-mails did indicate this), but in fact this may very well be the second BD in the Salzburg area. At least, I have never met any Big Dummies over here and there are no comments of Austrian BD riders in this blog. However, Surly as a bicycle manufacturer is rather wellknown over here.
Robert went for a ride with a local cycling club (see pictures). I am very much looking forward to have a beer with him, since we have not yet been able to meet up to now, and weather is still very bad. So maybe we need to wait some more time until those two big dummies can be captured on one picture with those two happy riders.
Roberts big dummy airmailed to Europe
Unpacking big dummy after shipping to Europe
Reassembled after being shipped to Europe
Roberts big dummy parked with great untersberg view
Riding with a local cycling association
Posing with some local cycling association
Please note these are Roberts pictures, that I am publishing here. Thanks a lot!
Our espresso machine needed service and I had to get it back from the shop after one week without it. No problem about. First Big Dummy ride in 2009, 45km, 500 meters of elevation: what a pleasure after sticking with our studded winter MTB for some months, even with this heavy block of steel strapped to the wideloader. Once more the Big Dummy proved great riding convenience.
Also, this was my launch ride for the new SON 20R front wheel and my new Snafu Knob Job tires. I perfectly like those tires. Low rolling resistance, ready for riding paved roads smoothly, even long distances, but also with some offroad capabilities. Due to tread pattern there is slight oscillation one can feel at the handlebar. A light humming sound reminding me of some low tuned distant singing bowl. Looks good so far, everything. I keep on liking this bicycle, totally.
Screenshots showing topografical overview of two tracks ridden
Fig.1 shows two screenshots of two different tracks in different scaling on topografical Oregon 400t map. I like the clear and pretty map drawings. This map does not contain trails and gravel roads mostly, but nevertheless it gives a good impression about topografical layout providing good readability. Also, it provides a surprising amount of roads and city streets enabling road navigation capabilites by means of uploading tracks generated with google maps or whatever. This works pretty well but certainly lacks automatic rerouting, also needs an internet computer for planning the route and creating a GPX file to be uploaded to the Oregon.
Displacement example
Fig 2.: Track displacement example: some sloped section ridden downhill with GPS mounted at handle bar in horizontal position (left image) and ridden uphill slowly with GPS carried in back bag of trikot. Although riding much faster and therefore creating less track points (visible at image), the sooner downhill track recording is by far more acurate than the latter uphill track.
Track up to the Zwölferhorn summit
Fig 3.: These are two track screenshots of an uphill (and back downhill) ride onto the Zwölferhorn summit at our area. Left image shows track overview within topografical 1:100000 Oregon map. Right image shows topografical 3D profile of this track section from birds perspective, a feature that I like very much.
All those screenshots were directly taken from the handheld, no postprocessing.
Previously I installed my MTB wheels to the BD but those 2.4″ Mountain King tires would not fit beneath fender stays. Well, I finally had to change tires due to bad wear of my Fat Frank rear tire, that even showed carcass damages already. This time I used my Big Dummy wheels and fit some MTB tires I had in my depot. Rear tire is Schwalbe Fat Albert 2.35″, front tire is Schwalbe Racing Ralph 2.1″. They both fit, and I experience very good snow riding quality, that may result from long wheelstand on the one hand and nobby tires on the other.
The Hirschbichl is a famous little pass between Weißbach near Lofer and Ramsau/Hintersee with some steep 30% slopes at both sides. My trip went from near Saalfelden, starting yesterday at 3:00 p.m. via Berchtesgaden, Zill (another nasty 25% of slope), Hallein, the Wiestal, Faistenau to Fuschl/See, arriving at darkness and cold, 80 km altogether, exhausted.
I had some very small video camera with me and captured some sections of it. Music track is ‘Blueberry Hill’, performed by Erika Stucky on Suicidal Yodel.
I would like to refer to my previous article about tires, steering, rigid fork. The steering issues were mostly fixed by increasing tire pressure. The fork oscillation happened again when riding downhill from the Hirschbichl at some very steep section. I guess this is a matter of using rigid forks with strong brakes probably, but this is not related to the specific BD frame and fork. Will keep it in mind.
Alfine hub: I was surprised using the Alfine hub did not mean any drawback for this trip. I did not miss derailleur shifting at all. Cogs ratio of 34/20 with 160mm crank arm length turned out to be totally sufficient for the uphills we did and also for riding plain roads. Downhills mostly were steep enough to just let it roll along. There were not a lot of slight downhill sections where I had to pedal speeds around 40 km/h constantly, which would be cumbersome with this transmission ratio.
Road bikes: two friends of mine with their (carbon) road bikes were going along with me. I cannot tell what made them use road bikes instead of their touring bikes, but this way I was assigned to take over the roll of the brakevan. While there was no problem when going downhill, I obviously was slower at uphills due to weight of the BD, but since I have always been liking uphill rides, I did not matter. Riding flat roads was the worst of it. Most of the time I could not keep up my friends speed, even when following immediately. At least, I enjoyed the BDs riding comfort.
On the other hand, riding offroad sections or gravel roads with the BD is perfectly safe and relaxed, while road bikes may need to be walked.
Bike charger: the bike charger I mentioned in previous posts did a good and reliable job. Output is sufficient to recharge my big PNA device, but power is not sufficient to run it continuously. I had to switch it off completely every now and then (pressing button for 6 sec) to allow recharging. According to manufacturer, the charger must be operated at speeds lower than 50km/h. In fact, I realized it would disengage automatically between 40 km/h and 50km/h. So, I switched on bicycle LED lights when going downhill. This way, the charger kept on working up to probably 60km/h. Obviously, this violates manufacturers specification, just to mention it.
Navigation: I used a Medion PNA with GoPAL navigation software. The device was of good use when riding at night (sixth day, routing in complete darkness), when riding long uphills (playing music, showing current altitude reached), routing through towns and in general by always providing current map segment and information about remaining kilometers to do. This device offers special bicycle routing funcionality, but I cannot recommend this, since it tends to create unnecessary slopes and elevation. One can never rely on it when choosing bicycle routing. On the other hand, when choosing motorcycle routing it might take you to some road not being suitable for cycling or probably even prohibited for bicycles. I had nearly ended up at some sort of motorway this way (although reading traffic signs and keeping brain switched on). Also, the gooseneck holder is weak and bent at every downhill slope, even when rolling on tarmac. I won’t use this device again for bicycle trips. It is way to big and takes up to much space at the handle bar, while only providing limited service quality for this kind of usage. I might consider getting some smaller device and installing it in less prominent position somewhere (upper tube?), probably.
Baggage: I used big plastic bags to put my stuff into when riding. There was only light baggage of probably 8kg, and this appeared to work quite well. There also was some rain at one day as a proof of concept. Xtracycle nylon mesh and straps have been staying in good condition. Xtracycle rack makes up a good place for drying shirts and trikots while riding. Packing is easy by just stuffing plastic bags and things into the freeloaders, but take care to keep up some basic packing rules. I lost 2 items due to confused plastic bag management.
It was very convenient being able to store and carry bulky things as like walking boots or just some food gathered on the way. Unlike when using some backpack or several small bags, there is plenty of space for all kinds of things in the freeloaders.
Riding quality: Basically I may confirm my previous impression about relaxed BD riding. I got along with reasonable effort and without pain. I did not feel slow, although not being able to compete with road bikes in the long run. I very much appreciated the BDs ability to take any road or trail, no matter about surface quality. For me, this is an important benefit due to the fact that I very much prefer riding small gravel tracks. I am looking forward to my next big dummy tour.
Images in gallery are in chronological order. Click images for details about the trip. Double click on thumbnail to get full sized picture in a new window.
Tomorrow at 3 o’clock in the morning I will be setting off to Italy for a small slope through Lombardy, although I am not yet finished with a light flue remaining from our latest trip through cold rain. I will cycle 35km to catch some train to Steinach/Brenner and from there at 9:30 a.m. start riding direction Lago di Garda and further on. There is not that much of baggage on the BD it seems, but actually its quite a lot for such a short trip without camping equipment. On the road bike I would have taken by far less load. Also, for the first time I will be using some navigation device on the bicycle, just to see how it works. I will meet friends on the way, but from the fifth day on I am left on my own and will ride back home to Austria without using a train, hopefully. Not yet sure about detailled timing and routing. We will see. Anyway, I am hoping for good weather. It looks a bit wet outside right now.
This Thursday we started for a family hiking trip to the Bergalm located 25km from our home. We planned to reside at the Neureith house for 2 nights and do some hiking there. The trip was planned only with bicycle and walking, no car. First day with arrival was nice weather and everything went perfectly, though it took some time with breaks every now and then. With my Alfine 8-speed setup in the big dummy some uphills were not extremely comfortable to ride with all the baggage and the little co-rider, but I was surprised I did it. There was some lack of tire traction at steep gravel climbs and the wideloader I had mounted for transporting our big and heavy hiking boots hit the ground several times when balancing through the rocks, but no problems so far. When reaching our target, the Neureith house, our friends who had been starting from the opposite side of the ridge had not yet arrived. They were walking up the Bergalm with their 3 kids. I got rid of our baggage, rode down the south side to meet them and got some big and heavy back pack up to the house for them.
At the second day it started to rain heavily and did not stop until we left on third day. We went down the route we had taken up there on first day, this time riding through a muddy ditch on slippy rocks, but again, no problems apart from getting wet and cold (very sorry I did not take any pictures at our departure).
Check gallery below for some more comments on this trip, that we enjoyed even though the weather went very bad.
Several weeks ago I received a donation unexpectedly: a Suunto T1 watch with heart rate monitoring and some training statistics capabilities. I have been using it for nearly every ride since then. In July I have been riding to work mostly, without any vacation trips. Besides from using the BD there were probably 2 or 3 MTB rides, 2 stepper rides and 2 rides on my Felt sporty cruiser. Nearly all rides were just commuting, but there were a few big dummy fun rides and some shopping trips. I did no long distance rides in July.
Riding distance on BD should have been something like 700-800km (it has got 1200km altogether since I have been assembling it in June). And there were some more kilometers with the other bikes mentioned. Up to now, there were 25 riding sessions in July. One session may consist of several rides, since I did not reset watch every time. I burnt 30000kcal and rode 40 hours. Unfortunately I have got no altimeter on the BD, but I did approximately 10000m of elevation. Average heart rate for each ride runs from 130 probably to 157 beats per minute (1:08h of steep and hard uphill riding on MTB), on the BD mostly being around 136 or so. Peak heart rate reaches up to 170.
Again, I need to say, the big dummy rides very well, and I am really having fun with it. No problems so far. And also, definitely no problems with my Alfine hubs at the BD and the MTB. Looking forward to our trip to Italy end of August.
I’d like to refer to an article from Vik’s big dummy blog about a long gravel road trip with mud and lots of baggage where freeloader bags got holes and other damages.
When receiving and installing my Xtracycle kit, my first impression was, that the nylon mesh and nylon loops stretched with tight tension in the V-racks did not look extremely strong and might probably wear out under heavy usage. I previously made a comment about this at the Rad-Spannerei blog (German language).
According to Vik apparently this is an issue, and I would once more recommend reinforcing the nylon material with patches of leather or whatever at least at some stressed seams and points with lot of friction. And for touring with heavy loads, better use a wide loader probably, which on the other hand might degrade handling of bicycle, especially when getting it on some train or whatever.
These image galleries and travelling journals have been in the web for a while, but nevertheless I would like to point them out here since they are absolutely great, anyway. Enjoy.
There were comments at commutebybike.com blog reporting some sort of draggyness when riding the BD. I was wondering about this, since my first impression was an opposite effect: big surprise how easy it was going, although I am using a simple 8-gear internal hub and quite heavy wheels.
Maybe a matter of tires used, tire size or air pressure? I was lucky with chosing the Schwalbe Fat Frank since it turned out to be very comfortable on the one hand, but also quite fast on the other. I cannot tell. One thing that came to my mind after the first trips is, that this cycle always gives a relaxing ride, no matter where I am riding. Right now I have been reaching approximately 600km on the BD with some commuting, escorting my wife through some running competition, fun rides with and without kid, some sportive rides and just going for things and groceries.
Top view on big dummy, sportsalute seat
Yesterday I had a tarmac ride of 80km doing a slope through the Ischler Trasse and back through the Strubklamm with nearly no load in the back. It was 1500 meters in altitude with quite some steepnees in it, easily reaching the Gaisbergspitze near Salzburg, and it was a pleasure altogether. Neither did I miss my road racer, nor the MTB, and I definitely was not slowest uphill. Also, going downhill is fairly easy, a pleasure. My maximum speed yesterday was 74km/h, but this certainly is not a limit. The longtail with its comfortable tires and strong 180mm disk brakes gives a very confident feeling when rolling downhill fast. The Spank Subrosa rims I used for my wheels offer the BeadNip[tm] design, a specially designed and prepared skid-proof tire seat at the inner walls. Even at low pressure, tires would not twist against rim. This requires applying quite some initial pressure to get tires seated properly, then adjust pressure to ones needs.
After all, the BD in fact is slower than a road racing cycle, but I am very surprised about its good riding quality even for long and sportive rides, touring, uphill and downhill. And I still cannot really explain the reason why it makes me feel relaxed when riding, no matter how much I push it, no matter where I go. For this reason (apart from many others) I believe it is a perfect concept worth of giving it a try.
We are planning a several days trip through northern Italy with long uphill passages the next month. I am looking forward to.
