When Surly announced that the Big Dummy was going to be hitting the streets in early 2008. I could feel a rush of excitement building that I haven't felt for a bike in a long time. My long standing interest in the Xtracycle concept had finally met the perfect bike at a time in my life when keeping my truck parked as much as possible was a priority.
The Big Dummy caught my eye because the purpose built design looked uber bomber and would mean a bike optimized for use with all the Xtracycle components. In particular I thought the added stiffness would be really important for controlling heavy loads and for traveling over rough terrain. Although many people are happily using Xtracycle Free Radicals on other bikes I could see that having an integrated system that was designed with heavy cargo hauling would be an improvement. That was the Xtra-incentive I needed to jump on the long tail band wagon.
So what are my plans for the Big Dummy? Well first off I'll use it for all the standard cargo missions - groceries, office supplies, hauling bikes, etc... Then I figure I can get a bunch of lifestyle missions accomplished - giving friends a lift, picking up someone on the way to dinner, coffee, etc... Finally I'm really stoked to see how the Big Dummy works for touring. Both on road and off road.
I mounted some Planet Bike Cascadia ATB fenders on my Big Dummy recently. They look great and fit the 2" Marathon XRs well.
The rear went on easily without any modifications and fits the BD frame perfectly. The fender struts are touching the BD frame so I'll put some electrical tape there to keep them from rubbing through the paint.
I mounted the front fender to the mid-fork braze ons - avoiding the disc brake caliper entirely. However, PB provides hardware to get you around the caliper if you want to use the lower mounts.
One issue I ran into is the massive amount of clearance in the BD fork means that if you mount the fender to the fork crown as you usually would you end up with a huge gap between the fender and the tire. It looked goofy so I made a small bracket from a scrap of metal to lower the fender closer to the tire. 
