âThe purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.â
â Eleanor Roosevelt
Track racing at the velodrome was the limit of my experience with fixed gear (fixed hub/axle) bicycles and, to be honest, I wasnât really cut-out for that kind of riding: hurtling around a steep, tight oval-track at 50+ km/h literally centimetres from competitors, sans brakes, in what is - in name only - a non-contact sport.
So, I had un-thinkingly moth-balled an otherwise beautiful machine (arenât all bicycles) - condemning it to a state of miserable neglect; and me to missing out on one of the absolute thrills in life - being in command of a fixie on the road
Inspiration can come from the strangest of people; and one of those very strange people was a fellow rider in a cycle- commuter group with which I ride (The Easy Riders). As if to shame me into rescuing my old track-bike from the ravages of eternal pretermission, his gauntlet almost perfectly fit my circumstances: rescue and old steel frame (preferably fixed or single-speed) and bring it back to life.
Once completed, I really had intentions that in no way exceed a brief - "see, I did it" - showing on a regular commute; after all: riding a fixed-geared bike is hard (it requires at least twice the concentration of a free-wheeled bike); it can be exhausting (only one gear to carry you up hill and down dale); and somewhere between dangerous and suicidal (steep downhills where you canât stop pedalling evoke images of frogs in blenders as your cadence goes wild).
As my years on Earth have taught me, life rarely goes according to plan - and is most often far âinterestingerâ that way⌠And so, I caught myself struggling to remember the words of Eleanor Roosevelt; sadly, all that came at the time was, âShit! that was cool.â
After another day of commuting, on fixie, I had decided that anything worth doing would probably be hard - I had planned on joining a group ride along the M7 bike-track (Bike North) - an undulating return trip of just under 80km, with a few decent climbs thrown in. Past experience had taught me that this group would likely lap up the bitumen at the lively rate of about 25-27Â km/h. This would be hard - oh well - nothing ventured: nothing gained (even if I only gained a black-eye for my ego).
And so, as our group pulled out I began to wonder if the 92 gear-inches was going to leave me struggling over the constant rollers and dying up the steeper pinches; much to my surprise, the bike just seemed to want gallop on. Even the steeper 2 minute climbs were nowhere near as dread-worthy as I had imagined. Perhaps the need to really plan the hill before arriving at its feet makes the execution far easier than when riding a geared road-bike, where planning and effort often give in to the comfort of the downshifter.
By the end of the 76Â km, I was right at the front of the peloton with a comfortable average of 28Â km/h (not bad for a first effort).
Despite feeling it in my legs a little more than usual, this definitely wonât be my final fling on the fixie.
