Comparing Surly's Flat Bar Touring Bicycles - Bridge Club, Troll, Ogre, ECR, Pugsley
Yawp Cyclery
It is a small world. Astronauts on the space station orbit the Earth every 92 minutes. There is value in seeing our planet that way, as expressed by Carl Sagan when he wrote about the “pale blue dot.” However, the world is also vast and complex, and I prefer to see the world at 10-13 mph. When traveling by car—or worse, RV—many if not most of the interesting details pass by unnoticed. Touring by motorcycle is better, mostly because you can smell roadside flower gardens, pies cooling in the windows of the houses you pass, and the Axe body spray of the driver next to you at a red light. Touring by bike, though, allows for staring contests with blue herons and detours into the backcountry where neither car nor motorcycle can go, and what’s not to like about eating everything you see along the way?
If you’re going to tour—for one night or for weeks—you’ll be happiest on a steel bike. They’re nearly indestructible and are more comfortable than frames made of other materials. Surly has several flat bar bikes in their touring category, but if you’re unfamiliar with them the differences can be hard to spot.
Versatility is one of the three things that Surly values most (along with durability and utility), which means that you can use all of these bikes for just about anything. Furthermore, because Surlys are endlessly customizable, the differences can become even more blurred depending on how they’re customized. Each of these bikes was designed for something specific, however, and will truly shine in that one particular area. So for now, we’re just going to stick to talking about the stock builds.
(Also, if you’re interested in Surly’s drop bar bikes, we have a blog post comparing them here. If you’re interested in the bikes in their Trail category, we’ll be publishing a blog about those soon.)
One way to look at the differences between these bikes is to think of them as falling along a timeline. You tell me how far back in time you wish to travel and I’ll tell you which bike will best suit your needs.
Do you like right now? Do you like riding your bike down the bike path, weaving through downtown, and eating pizza at the Marquis before catching a show? Maybe you like taking the train halfway to work and jumping off early to take the long way in. Maybe you like riding the South Platte trail way down to the southern end with a picnic, and then continuing onto the gravel road that leads up Waterton Canyon. Now is pretty great. You can order beer at the movies! There is less violence now than at any time in human history[1]. The 700 Bridge Club is the perfect bike for now. Now is a very urban time, with over half the world’s population living in urban areas. Our pavement is a bit rough in places, but the 700x41 Extraterrestrial tires on the Bridge Club are well suited for it, as well as for all of the gravel you wish to grind. Hydraulic brakes? Sure, why not. It’s now!
Maybe you want to travel back in time to November 11th, 1918. Perhaps you are too young to have lived through anything in your own time similar to the end of a world war. But see, the roads in 1918 were in rough shape. All of our spare cash had been going to the war efforts, and the roads had seen an unprecedented amount of traffic, what with trucks hauling all of the manufactured war goods to the ports to be shipped overseas. Most of our roads were unpaved, and the few that were had suffered severe surface damage. Many of the streets that were in good shape were made of cobblestone. In 1918, you will want tires that range from 2.2-2.5” in width to get through chunks of busted pavement. You will need the traction to get through the loose, rutted, muddy, and faint tracks that pass for roads. The Troll, Ogre, and 27.5” Bridge Club will be at home in 1918.
Yes, all three bikes are at home on the same kind of terrain. Does that make the differences between them meaningless? Not at all. Many of the differences between these bikes have to do with your preferences as a rider, and less to do with the differences in their capabilities. Here are a few questions that might help narrow it down.
Touring around the world? Take the Troll. (It’ll be a dangerous world in 1918, but hasn’t it always been?) The 26” wheels are more common worldwide, and it still comes stock with the classic touring 3x10 drivetrain as well as cantilever brake studs.
Do you have a budget? The 27.5” Bridge Club is $1200, the Ogre is $1450, and the Troll is $1700 (as of the writing of this blog (whatever “now” means)).
Do you have a favorite wheel diameter? The Troll has 26” wheels, the 27.5” Bridge Club has 27.5", and the Ogre has 29”.
Do you need to pull a Surly Bill or Ted trailer? The Troll and Ogre dropout have attachment points built right in.
Max tire clearance on the Troll and Ogre is 2.6, while the Bridge Club is 2.8. (Can you run 27.5 x 3” tires on an Ogre? Yes. But we aren’t talking about that. We’re talking about stock builds. But would it be rad anyway? Sure!)
The overall gear range on the Ogre isn’t quite as wide as that of the other two bikes. This drivetrain lends itself to shorter, overnight tours as well as commuting.
Want to run a Rohloff hub? Well shucks, they all can!
If you still aren’t sure, the best thing to do is ride the bikes. A preference will likely make itself apparent.
Also, did you think this through? Prohibition will pass in less than a year!
ECR
Maybe you want to travel further back in time, into June of 1847 to ride the Oregon Trail. To cross the continent ahead of the railroad. The wagon trail was a road in the same way that an echinocactus is a toothbrush. You’ll want a lot of traction and a low tire pressure, but you’ll still want the necessary agility to steer around the oxen poop and cholera. The ECR is what you’ll want to carry your squirrel pelts and 60 pounds of coffee from Independence, MS to Oregon City. The larger tire volume will be more forgiving as you’re crossing wagon wheel ruts and rocky terrain in the west. You’ll get through the powdery, sandy soil in Wyoming, be able to ford the shallow rivers with their slippery, smooth stones in Idaho. The smaller sizes come with 27.5+ wheels, and the larger sizes come with 29+. The frames are different, so these wheels aren’t interchangeable. We know how much ya’ll like to swap your wheels around, but for this model the wheel size scales with frame size, and the results are great. Only those of you who fit on medium-sized frames have your choice of wheel size. What’s the difference? The 29+ roll over obstacles a little better and 27.5+ are slightly more agile. They’re both great! Can’t go wrong. Good luck hunting squirrels. You have typhoid. You have a snakebike. You have exhaustion.
They really do move in herds.
Or perhaps the sum of human folly has you down, and you want to see early peccaries of the Oligocene, 25 million years ago. I don’t have to tell you to wear your cloak of intangibility, right? Because you’ve read A Sound of Thunder, right? Good. (If you haven’t read A Sound of Thunder, this will do). The bike you’ll want to take is the Pugsley. You’ll be crossing terrain that has never been crossed before. You’ll need the maximum amount of traction, flotation, and stability for riding over fallen trees, through swamplands, and across cold lava flows. Should you encounter a mini ice age, you’ll be ready. And, AND! If things go really sideways, you can always put your rear wheel on the front and your front wheel on the rear and convert your Pugs into a singlespeed. If that’s not prehistoric, I don’t know what is.
Now, you may be somewhat dissatisfied by this post. Perhaps you’ve bikepacked extensively on a Karate Monkey or a Krampus. They’re great for that. I know it and you know it. But they fall in Surly’s trail category, so we’ll talk about them another time.
I guess there are many other reasons you may be dissatisfied with this post. If so, feel free to travel back in time to 45 minutes ago and order a pizza instead. (All of these bikes are great for picking up pizza.)
