It handles hills quite nicely. Unlike with almost any kind of trailer, there is no pulsing or surging action fighting your progress as you pedal. The unusual weight distribution makes it somewhat easy to slip the rear wheel while accelerating hard from a stop or climbing a steep hill at low speed, but it hasn’t caused me any real problem. Gear it low and spin your way to the top comfortably.

The fork does indeed have provisions for a front rack. There are eyelets at the dropouts, mid-blade, and near the crown. I don’t have a front rack on mine right now, but I’m thinking about it because I like to have a place to keep smaller things within reach while riding, like my GPS and cell phone.

The racking system probably isn’t the absolute best replacement for racks and panniers, but it can definitely carry a lot more that a typical loaded touring bike without much hassle. I’ve taken mine camping once already, piling my Hennessey Hammock, winter sleeping bag, and insulated ground pad into one side and my clothes, tools, and cooking gear in the other side. I’ve carried people on the back for short distances as well, and that works surprisingly well.

If you want some strong rims, look at the Velocity Cliffhanger (26″) or the Velocity Dyad (700c). They are both really beefy deep-section rims. I am running Dyads on my Long Haul Trucker touring bike, and Cliffhangers on my Big Dummy. Both work great and have built up into very strong, stiff wheels.

I don’t mind the extra weight, Heck I have close to 10k of loaded touring with a B.O.B. but to climb hills with it you need weight over the front as well.

The Kona doesn’t appear to have a brazing for front rack (or a standard fender setup for that matter, though it does come with….) It would be a very upright seating possition for me anywho at 6′2″ with the single size frame.

Anyone get their hands on a Big Dummy frame yet? It also doesn’t appear to have front rack mounts.

ANy thoughts on this replacing a touring bike, I have been touring on a converted mountain bike largely for the srtonger wheels, I’m rebuiling my rear now after hitting a curb (long story) and flattening my rhynolt xl rim building with a mammoth rim as I was encouraged by a mountain bike shop though I’m not sure if it’s really stronger after looking at a cut out. any opinions?

I live in south Minneapolis, and I’ve spotted Dave Gray riding his prototype Big Dummy around several times. We’ve stopped to talk a few of these times, and he told me that the last changes had been made, and they were finally putting in a production order. This was early August, I think, and he said that it would probably be November to December before we would have our hands on the mass-produced frames locally.

I’ve got most of the parts for my BD build already stockpiled in my basement, so I’m just eagerly awaiting a frame.

Here’s the current info about the frameset from the Surly website, which is showing a February availability:
http://surlybikes.com/new/bigdummy_pop.html

i’m building a BD ASAP.