Surly Midnight Special - Road bike hell to road bike heaven

Three years ago I made a video where I was going on about how much I love the frame of my bike, Airwolf (Trek Alpha 1.1). It was the lightest bike I’d ever owned and it felt incredible agile, partly due to its short wheel base. However, the components were broken and didn’t exactly suited to me. I found the shifters hard to use, I didn’t like the gear range and the brakes weren’t working. I then proceeded to install an almost complete Tiagra groupset with a wider range of gears and more of them. I was blown away by how much the new components improved the way the bike rode. I thought I’d have that bike for the rest of my life.

That was back when I used to ride it maybe 6 times a year. I then started riding Airwolf to work every day and quickly realised that it was absolutely not the bike for me. Firstly, it was so uncomfortable. This was down to a few things but mainly the tyre clearance. There are lots of potholes on the roads around where I live and quite often they are too big to avoid and sometimes the ride was so harsh my chain would fall off. Plus there are a lot of gravel footpaths around me that I couldn’t make use of because the tyres were too skinny. Secondly, the frame felt really fragile so I couldn’t jump off pavements or generally throw the bike around. Thirdly, and probably most importantly, I realised the frame was too big for me.

Basically, I just wanted bigger tyres and for the bike to actually fit me. I looked into budget road bikes with big tyre clearance, but I don’t think such a bike exists. If you know of a brand making an aluminium road bike with wide tyre clearance please let me know.  I thought my only option was to go for a gravel bike. That was until I found a very reasonbly Surly Midnight Special. It was a bike I hadn’t even considered because I assumed it would be way too expensive.

The Surly Midnight Special is a steel bike described by Surly as an All Day Road Plus Bike. It’s got clearance for 27.5 x 2.35" or 700c x 42mm wheels.

I contacted Surly to ask them about the story of the Midnight Special and this is what they said: The Midnight Special basically came about after a series of our past all-road bikes, like the Pacer, and Pack Rat, needed to be laid to rest.  Thus, the MS was born with new and improved geometry, bigger, fatter tire clearance, thru-axles, flat-mount disc brakes, etc.  Just a general, beautiful update in an attempt to keep our line-up as timeless as possible.

Otherwise, the Midnight Special name is an ode to the Creedence Clearwater song about a midnight train that allowed prisoners to escape in Texas back in the day.

For me the Midnight Special is the perfect road bike. The road bike geometry makes it nimble. It’s got room for massive tires. It’s built like a tank so it’ll probably last me for life. And most importantly, it fits me.

I should add that since these photos I changed the tyres for some smooth 650b x 47 Teravail Rampart tyres.