Eenie Fatty Meenie Fatty Miney Fatty
Oh, how to choose?
Pugsley, once the undisputed heifer of bicycles, is now the waifish supermodel of Surly's fat bike family with its almost dainty 65mm rims.
(Fashionistas like me may be interested to note that the 2013 Pugsleys apparently honor hook and ladder crews with a color choice of either firetruck red or firetruck yellow, an unwelcome departure from their typically offbeat palette of options like Smoggy Pearl and Dave's Frozen Tears.)
The Neckromancer is a Pugs with 82 mm rims and the Moonlander's (wider) front fork.
It comes in Burned Nougat.
Finally there's the even more outlandish Moonlander, large and in charge astride eye-popping 100 mm rims which, at nearly 4 inches across, dwarf even the rolliest and polliest of bicycle tires.
The Moonlander is available in, you guessed it, Space.
Whether you're eyeballing Surly's lineup, the Mukluk collection of sister-company Salsa, or any of the other manufacturers who've gone big, like On One, Vicious Cycles, Speedway Cycles, Fatbikes, and Hoggar as well as custom builders like Black Sheep, Twenty2, Moots, A-Train, and Schlick, the biggest fat bike choice comes down to rim size.
Employing foolproof the-leg-bone's-connected-to-the-hip-bone logic, what that means is the fork and frame have to be able to accommodate massive rims and mutant tires.
An easy way to look at it is from the top down, literally.
Standing over the bicycle and looking down at the horizontal bits you'll notice the Moonlander has a 28mm offset drivetrain compared to the Pugsley's 17.5mm offset drivetrain to keep the chain from hitting the tire pudge.
A 100 mm bottom bracket and crank, including a mountain triple, will fit the Pugs.
You'll need a Surly Mr. Whirly Offset Double (comes with 22/36 teeth cogs) for the Moonlander.
You can skinny the Moonlander's stock 100 mm rim down to a svelte 82 mm rim and run a 4-inch tire, whereas the Pugs can beef up to an 82 mm rim and drop down to a 50 mm rim and handle everything from 3.8-inch tires (on 82's with the Mr Whirly) to an absolutely dainty 2.1-inch on a 50mm 29er rim.
With the appropriately named Moonlander there's nowhere to go but down.
On the Pugs you can go up and down.
Three chain-rings, and especially that big one up front, will come in handy when I'm riding to the dirt. Plus I like the swapability of standard-sized parts, which I have in abundance littering my garage. Finally, since I'll be spending most of my Fat Time on sloppy trails with a little beach-biking thrown in, rim-size-wise the Pugs is the go-to configuration for my riding.
This isn't to say a skinnier fatty is the right choice for you, or that one ring to rule them all (especially if you'll be running a Rohloff or an Alfine internally-geared hub) wouldn't be your slice of huckleberry pie.
But that's the beauty of going big.
Almost eight years after the first mass-produced fat bike hit the scene in 2005, there are now expedition worthy fatties, racing fatties, super floaty fatties, fatties in steel, aluminum, and titanium, fatties with and fatties without lots of rack and water bottle mounts, all of which makes a big decision even bigger: which one?
I only hope this helps make the choice as agonizing for you as it was for me.