Freedom to Ride: Mastering the Fold

As you hurtle down the mountainside, adrenaline surges through your veins. Your tires cling to the rugged terrain, grappling with rocks, drops, and roots—their resilience tested by the extra body weight gained during lock downs. Your bike computer flaunts speeds north of 60 km/h, yet you can’t shake the unease that comes with entrusting your life to questionable parts beneath your hands and feet. Your safety, it seems, hangs in the balance of their molecular bonds.

Living through this exact experience I remained undeterred, fueled by the desire to live, to seek new adventures, to ride, and to hear the occasional:
“What the hell are you riding, mate?”

Three years into this bike-folding journey, I remained stubbornly committed to my ways. Money continued to flow into bike components and gear, because, who’s to say the answer to life, the universe, and everything isn’t simply n+1?

If you’d gaze at my hinged contraption, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the frame was the sole remaining survivor from the original bike. However, another untouched element would be easily overlooked – the soul of the bike, its geometry.
I know what you’re thinking:
“How on earth do you change the geometry without swapping the frame?”
Well, my friends, there is a non obvious solution – changing the fork lenght.

I wanted to slacken the front of the bike, bringing the head tube angle within 70 degrees. The requirements to do so wrote themselves: no less than 350mm of steerer tube and no more than 400mm of axle-to-crown. In addition I was looking for a burly construction, and multiple eyelets, for mounting stuff that Mad Max look.

A new fork would allow me to kill two birds with one stone. The mini-velo toothpick that held the front wheel during the island escape, looked so flimsy, its usage was banned by the World Health Organization.
Months passed, the search went on. But just as the echoes of the bike boom were beginning to fade, I got my hands on the elusive, legendary item:
Name: Surly Disc Trucker 26″ fork
Axle-to-Crown: 376mm
Steerer: 400mm 1-1/8˝ straight
Brake Mount: Flat Mount 160mm
Axle: Thru Axle
This wasn’t your average fork, folks. Oh, no! It was a steel behemoth, forged in the fires of Mount Surly. With a load rating of 130kg and more eyelets than an eyelet factory, this fork was made for bikepacking gods to tackle the most rugged off-road excursions!

The geometry now changed, to resemble that of the epic 90’s mountain bikes, I felt nothing could stop me. What remained was to ride, racking up miles and kilometres, until another crazy idea would come to mid…