Meet my new bike!

Yes! That's my new Surly Crosscheck.

I took the picture right after I got back from the bike shop, so the saddle is still lower than what I normally ride with.

That was yesterday afternoon. Since then, I took it for a little ride along the nearby Hikiji River and then today I went for a longer ride to Oiso. I can say with all sincerety that this is pretty much the bike I wanted. It is really solid and can be ridden over all kinds of stuff like gravel and sand without having to worry if I might slip or damage the bike. I took a bunch of pictures and I think this entry will be very much tech oriented, so if you're not into that, I'm sorry, but please let me indulge as I am still so happy to have this "new" bike.



This was along the Hikiji River yesterday with rice fields in the back. I've raised the saddle and put on the rear rack. You don't see too many people using rear racks here other than on mamacharis. Also, you might have noticed that this bike has a kick stand. That wasn't standard issue, but I knew that almost everytime I park the bike, it will come in handy, so I had it put on at the shop.



The tires are the Schwalbe Marathon 700 x 28. These are pretty wide tires for me, but there's a lot of bumps on the roads around here, so these are much better than skinny tires.



The rims are Salsa Delgado Cross. The shop guy picked these which was a surprise, but I know of Salsa as a maker of mountain bikes and components, so I think these will be plenty tough.



Avid Shorty cantilever brakes. One thing I wanted on my new bike were cantilever brakes. I wasn't unhappy with the performance of the sidepull brakes on my old bike, but I never liked the complexity of them. With cantilever brakes, they are simple and you can see exactly how they work and so they are easy to take care of as well.



As you can see, I've got quite a bit of stack under the stem. On my old bike, I had less, but it seemed with this frame, I needed this much to achieve the same position. I'm not sure if the top tube is low on purpose as this is a cross frame. If I was to build a custom frame, I would probably have the top tube a bit higher, but the bike rides just fine as it is, so, I'm OK with it.



The kickstand. Not sure the make, but this works great. You can adjust the length of the leg by turning the striped collar. There are almost no bike racks anywhere you go in Japan, so the bike needs to be able to stand by itself. Bike theft isn't as much of a problem here especially in this more rural city of Fujisawa, so you don't need to lock the bike to something else as you would in the US.



Anyway, this bike and I are definitely gonna go explore all over this area. I'm really looking forward to it and I will be reporting on our trips for sure. I haven't thought of a name for it yet, but if you have any suggestions, I'm all ears.