Freewheeling is evil
Francis Sedgemore, Monday 18 May 2009
Time for a little bike porn, methinks (that’ll get the search engines going!)…
I am now a fixed-gear bike convert. No more silly derailleur gears and freewheels for me. Fixed-gear cycling is the absolute dog’s bollocks. Coasting on a freewheel bike is like driving a car downhill with your foot on the clutch. No control, and quite pointless.
The bike pictured above is a modified Specialized Tricross with a 42:18 fixed-gear drive train. Only a front brake is neccesary, as with a fixed gear I have my legs to slow and stop the rear wheel with back pressure on the pedals. It’s cheap and chearful, for a serious bike, and a truly outstanding machine! I’ve now started using this bike for everything from pootling around town on the flat, to hauling myself around the hills of the North Downs in rural Kent. It weighs just 6.5 kg.
Feed the writer! 
Monday 18 May 2009 at 19:43 GMT
Them are nice nasturtiums …
Monday 18 May 2009 at 19:58 GMT
The entire garden’s lovely. There may only be a few square metres of soil in an L-shape, but I have much growing in them, including vegetables and herbs as well as nasturshums and stuff.
Monday 18 May 2009 at 20:20 GMT
Pity we can’t swap (swop?) cuttings. This year we have a serious surplus in aquilegia, Moroccan mint and sweet william. The lemon balm is growing like wildfire and so are the lupins. The gooseberries are doing fine, though the beans not so. Eaten by the bastard blackbirds.
Monday 18 May 2009 at 20:27 GMT
The garden here is protected by a couple of foxes, who are often to be found in the daytime curled up half-asleep under the kitchen wall. No bastard blackbirds would dare come anywhere near the place.
Tuesday 19 May 2009 at 06:27 GMT
Phoarrr. What do you do with your feet though? They just have to keep spinning round with the pedals? And only one gear?? Sounds like a nightmare… please explain.
Tuesday 19 May 2009 at 09:43 GMT
You keep pedalling, and your legs increase in suppleness. One gear should be enough for anyone, if chosen well. With a fixed-gear you have more control, you can feel the variations in traction under the wheel, it encourages you to ride smoothly and efficiently, it builds strength, the bike has much lower maintenance overheads that a multi-geared machine, and its weight is very low.
Nightmare? Not at all. In fact it’s a lot of fun.
Wednesday 20 May 2009 at 06:52 GMT
Hmm. Your argument is impressive and certainly the lighter a bike is the more it feels like a (rather elegant) part of one’s own body, but the phrase “It probably depends where you live” keeps returning to me. I wouldn’t fancy doing Llanberis Pass on it.
Wednesday 20 May 2009 at 09:11 GMT
Most people would balk at doing the Llanberis Pass on a multi-geared bike. And if they tried, it would be in such a low gear that they’d be overtaken by pedestrian hikers on the way up.
Thereis no shame in wheeling a fixed-gear bike up the steepest stretches, but you’d be surprised how steep they need be to force riders off their machines. The drive train of a fixed-gear bike is much more efficient than a derailleur mechanism at the same gear ratio, as the chain does not have to pass through a complicated setup of friction-inducing twists and turns.
On my fixed-gear bike I am very often faster uphill than cyclists of similar physical strength on geared road bikes. Coming down the other side is never fast on a fixie, but then I don’t particularly care for freewheeling speed when so exposed to the elements and hard tarmac.
Thursday 21 May 2009 at 14:15 GMT
Getting off and pushing it!! And there was I thinking you were a purist ;-) You argument is still impressive, but I still remember the (probably rather childish) pride of climbing Llanberis Pass without dismounting and then zooming down the other side.
Saturday 23 May 2009 at 10:05 GMT
“You keep pedalling, and your legs increase in suppleness.” Gee, I do detect a Luddite sympathizer here.
If I didn’t hate driving on the wrong side of the road and if I had the $10M necessary, this is what I would have paraded near you and your bike:
http://blogs.cars.com/kickingtires/2009/04/shelby-cobra-coupe-may-become-most-expensive-car-ever.html
While chewing a double-decker hamburger with big fries and a milkshake. Of course.
Saturday 23 May 2009 at 12:39 GMT
Most expensive car evva, eh?
I’ve found that, in such situations, a bunch of readily accessible keys in a cyclist’s pocket is a great all-round leveller.