Happy new year! It's been 4 months since I last posted. I've gotten another bike - a Surly 1x1 from a Craigslist listing. It was built up with a Shimano Nexus 8-speed hub. I added a Xtracycle frame extension for my purposes. I still need to get big fenders for it. Otherwise it's a very enjoyable and useful ride. It's like the pickup of bikes. It carries a lot and it's easy to stow stuff inside. This bike contains two things that I had wanted into 1. I wanted to try the 8-speed internally geared hub and the Xtracycle attachment.

Currently the rear cog is about 21 teeth and I spin in the top gear much of the time. Since there was a lot to adapt I bought a 16 tooth gear but haven't installed it.

The Surly 1x1 is a frame designed for single speed use. The frame also accommodates huge fat tires up to 2.7" in width. That presents a problem when adding the Xtracycle. It's puny washer wedge thingy that supports the Xtracycle frame between the chainstays isn't big enough. So I built an adapter from some 2" metal pieces. I had never built something out of metal before. It was satisfying, but ugly. It's very crude, but I've put in many miles on it successfully.