I. A brief personal history of my Relationship with the Fixed-Gear Bicycle
I pieced together my first fixed-gear bicycle when I was 18 years old. I lived in Florida, and was just getting over a BMX racing-related injury. I started riding road bikes to recover and get back in shape and could only afford really old equipment. I pieced together an old race bike but was then in need of a training bike, so i didnt wear out the already worn-out parts of my "precious" race bike. I worked at a small local biike shop at the time, and we had a road race team. Many riders used fixed-gear bicycles during the winter to improve and maintain their spin as well as build strength. As a bicycle mechanic, i was drawn to the simplicity of these machines, and combined with my lack of funds for derailleurs resulted in me cobbling together my very own fixed-gear "training" bike. A friend gave me their old Caloi aluminum frame with aluminum fork. I built up a basic wheelset and had an old Sugino 170mm crankset. My first time out on the bike I remember getting goosebumps. I was Home.
I rode that bike quite a bit, but only ever in "training" mode,-I never really commuted on it, and still rode my road bike most of the time since I was racing regularly and moving up the ranks quickly, determined to succeed. At this point I was not even commuting by bicycle, and I had yet to trade my car for a race bike........
Fast-forward a few years: carless commuter, working for a Dutch bicycle importer, long since dropped-out of racing with bigger dreams in mind. By this point I had another nice fixed-gear I had been riding around, commuting and riding for fun. I had been to and worked in Amsterdam, I wanted to get out of the South. I found an old 70s road bike in the dumpster at the marina where I worked. It was rusted badly, everything seized. For some reason I was driven to get that bike working and in perfect mechanical condition. Something about it being Free, that i found it as Trash, and that it had a Japanese name "Takara" on the brass headbadge, which means Treasure. Long story short, I moved to Boston with that bike converted to fixed gear of course, and when I decided to move to California from Boston, it was the only choice, I would ride my fixed gear dumpster treasure across this great country to the promised land, and I did! I pulled a BOB trailer, with 40 x 16 gearing.
So now onto the meat of this Manifesto: Why only one gear with no freewheel???
II. What Riding Fixed is Like
This topic is nothing new, and many people have written many things about this. What i'll write here is merely my own personal experience with urban riding and touring on a fixed gear machine. I've toured loaded with 50 pounds of stuff across the USA, toured unloaded and lightly loaded during brief day-long or few-day excursions; have raced and won a number of alley cat races in San Francisco, Oakland/east bay, Boston, Orlando, Gainesville, and St. Augustine, Florida; commuted daily, and ridden 30 mph + through rush hour traffic as an asshole and as a not-asshole. I will not speak of velodromes here since it is irrelevant, and I never had a real connection to riding around in a circle anyways. Straight line, sure; circle, not so much...This is a comparison if you will, since many people have done and do the things ive done above but with a bike having multiple gears and the ability to coast........All talk now is referring to being on a fixed gear bicycle:
Once I start moving, the cadence is noticed right away, since there is one gear, cadence is the only variable, and directly related to the speed at which I move. I am able to notice instantly if i am going uphill, down, or on level ground. When i need to slow or stop, no other body parts need to be called upon besides the ones already engaged: I think: "slow down", my legs slow down, and with them the machine and I slow down, "we" do without any extra effort. There is only one movement always, the legs. no fingers or hands and arms reaching for and switching noisy gears, no fingers pulling brake levers.
Since my legs are always moving, my mind is also always moving, nothing stops, ever. Since I have less to "think about" regarding the actual riding of the bike, i am able to sense more around me and within me: my breathing, my heart beat, my leg muscles, the air quality, the surface texture of the ground i am riding over; i feel the wheels turning, the chain, i feel every piece of grit in the drive train through my feet, i feel the tread pattern of the tires, i feel the elevation of the ground change, even if its only by a few inches.......the slightest incline or decline is easily noticed.
gone Riding
will finish one day.......
or not
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