I spent a couple-few hours tooling around town yesterday on the Pugsley. The slurpy has froze solid. This has created much more favorable conditions for the ultra fat rubber on the Pugs. Although the Pugsley is not a huge fan of sheer ice (and this is not a shortcoming of the Pugs, though can you imagine studded 4" tires at 10 psi?), it does great powering over clumps of frozen slushy slop.
I'm getting a feel for the front end. The hard part about frozen slurpyville is negotiating tire ruts. You can ride in them if you're zen and look down the road. Or you can ride across them. On a normal bike, riding across them would be challenging. On a Pugs, it's can be challenging, but your odds are way better. So -- front end wise, I'm finding that unweighting/slightly popping the front wheel on transitions over the ruts helps a lot.
Generally, I'm not finding the Pugsley to be as "slow" as I expected it to be. And I expected it to be a major slug turd. It's clearly not fit for the early morning race up Hatch, but given how huge it looks, I was surprised at how relatively not-hard it is to get it up to a nice cruising speed and keep it there. David has got this bike dialed in, so that helps.
Not only the cush ride out to Badger, but how cool would it be to float the lake on an endomorph tube . . .
ReplyDelete"slug turd" Now that's a band name.
ReplyDelete"Pugsley and his Banana Slug Turds."
ReplyDeleteI kind of see it as a goth-hippie rockabilly anarchy band from Eugene. There's not enough of those, imho.
Does the front shock add much suspension over just the tires?
The first full suspension model should be called a Fugsley.
Yeah -- the front shock does add even more cush. Amazingly enough. I've had it locked out for all my riding, but it still "shocks."
ReplyDeleteI'm curious what the bike feels like with the original fork.
John I still have the original fork and offset rim if you wanted to try it sometime without suspension. I put it on there because the high volume tires (undampened) are quite bouncy if you get into situations like multiple bumps, babyheads, etc. and the front would skip out on me. The fork helped it hook up better and helped make things like post holed snowy trails more manageable. In fact...I even thought about putting a thudbuster seatpost on and it looks like you may have done that so I am curious how you like that.
ReplyDelete