So, over at the surlyblog, the fine folks at Surly Bikes are doing a little tease on two new projects they've got coming.

Putting 2 and 2 together, I noticed the other day (before their domain was apparently hijacked) that the Xtracycle guys mentioned that they would be in the Surly booth.

Xtracycle sells Surly's Karate Monkey with a Free Radical as part of a kit, but that's not something Surly would be this excited about. My prediction is that Surly is about to introduce a bike dozens of us must have thought about: an all-in-one Xtracycle.

The FreeRadical is a cool hack, but at its heart it's just that: a hack. There are a lot of advantages to building a long bike from scratch: uninterrupted stays should be stronger than a bolted interface, for instance, and you can match your componentry to the bike's new role right from the start.

A few smart people have already undertaken the longbike-from-scratch challenge. Xtracycle has talked about it, Curtis Inglis built a custom frame, Todd at Cleverchimp has the beautiful Xtravois, and Fraser Cycles has built a couple of long-wheelbase city bikes.

Xtracycle's presence means that, unlike Fraser's bikes, the Surly will be compatible with Xtracycles accessories, which I'm hoping includes the Stokemonkey.

This is just my hypothesis. If I'm right, Byron will be all over this tomorrow.