fixed gear nut

Fixed gear Nut.

At a time when there are a multitude of new bikes on the market, and new ones entering it seems every day, the purchaser is faced with a price list that runs from down to earth to astro eternity.

Starting point is really a matter of where the new would be cyclist is coming from, £250.00. may seem a fortune to some and not a lot to others.

Experienced cyclists, those with a club background, will of course view a £250.00. bike as a ‘bike shaped object’ that will at some point drive the buyer to such frustration that a neighbour’s skip will be sought in the dead of night. Lesson learned, advice will be much appreciated by the rueful would be cyclist.

So, when in the know, a bike is bought hopefully from a local bike shop, along with a bit more knowledge about bikes and reliability.

Gears, how many? Well how many do you want, after all now you can have as many as thirty three, three up front x eleven behind. Now you have thirty three to choose from what ratios do you want, ‘Eh?’ Oh my god, where do we start.

Well then, I started a long time ago when it was the norm to ride a bike with just one gear, just get on and ride, simples. More often than not that single gear became a fixed gear, after all your mates were on fixed gear as well. Gears were available, the ubiquitous Sturmey 3 speed or the Trivelox deraileur but they were for the ‘older guys’.

The fixed gear was a great leveller in terms of equipment and so reliable with little or, as was so often, no maintenance. A drop of oil on chain and in hubs and that was it, such economy suited my meagre pocket money.

Like the club runs of today, once up to speed, the rides stayed together and if one couldn’t hack it a more suitable ride was sought. Club rides then were also all day affairs, during summer long rides were the norm, 100, 120, and 140 mile rides were frequent. There was no ‘back by four’ or ‘six’, arriving home after nine pm was not unusual.

Today the fixed gear rider is viewed as someone who may just be a bit of a nut, and judging by recent u tube postings of the antics of couriers such a view could be justified.

The majority of today’s cyclists can see no reason at all why anybody would want to ride on the road without gears, after all there are hills to surmount, gears are necessary.

Having been introduced to cycling in the ‘fixed gear era’ it was many years before I resorted to riding a multi geared bike, welcome to easier cycling, well I’m afraid it didn’t quite work out like that. 

Having been out of club cycling for a very long time I found riding any bike hard work but I still had faith in the old fixed wheel, so much so that when I turned up for a ride with the CTC word got round very quickly there was a nut case on the loose. I persevered for a while and mistakenly put my struggling to keep up with younger riders down to the fact that they had gears, and plenty of them, never giving a thought to the fact I was just a lot less fit.

I bit the bullet and purchased a bike with gears, twelve of them, lets see them drop me now I thought. All too soon I found lack of fitness and ignorance of gearing gelled together like nothing on earth.

A trip down to Castleton in Derbyshire with two young sprogs only too eager to get there taught me every thing I needed to know about where I was bike wise or otherwise. We had gone there to meet a group who had been weekend hostelling and if I was weary on getting there, it was nothing to how I felt on the way back.

The major lesson of the day was gear changing when appropriate, when it comes to learning I am a bit thick and never got it right, twelve gears and never in the right one, frustration was the name of the game.

Over the following months nothing much changed except I got a bit fitter but still could not find the gear I needed when it was wanted.

I began to ride with the clarion again after bumping into them on a solo ride in Cheshire, the easy going group riding at an easy going pace allowed me to chat and talk to them. The B group ride became my regular outing, it was so easy going I returned to fixed gear riding again, no longer having to decide what gear to shove in was a bonus, the easy pace gave me no heart aches, I was comfortable.

Forget the crap in magazines about being at one with the bike on fixed but undoubtedly for me, not having to wonder which gear to select when a hill beckoned made life a lot easier.

The revelation of riding a single fixed gear came home to me while actually riding my geared bike, my first ride with the longer distance ride, the A group. The ride was to Arnside and being a long ride of over 100 miles I thought the gears would come in handy, they did but not in the way I had anticipated.

Leaving Bolton via Tudor Avenue the pace was quite hot, a strong tailwind was assisting but it wasn’t the only thing blowing, the pace up the drag had me reaching once more for gears that did nothing to assist an easy passage. As I found the going harder I dropped the gears, the lower the gear the harder it got, I only just made it to the lights on Chorley New road, I thought I was going to die.

Once we got going again I moved the gears up then what happened next truly brought home to me the advantage of a fixed gear. I looked down at the gears when I felt comfortable and realised I was in a gear that I had used for mile after mile all those years ago, eureka, I’ve found it.

The group was moving fast, the tail wind was a real bonus allowing  a pace that had to be around ‘evens’, that’s twenty MPH, often the holy grail of club runs, and I was in the right gear. I reckoned I was pushing around a sixty eight inch gear, I was so comfortable, my breathing became easy, the going became easy. I never changed gear again all day, fearful that if I did the wheels would once again drop off.

The first tea break was at Garstang where the leader remarked he had never been up the A6 so fast in his life, I was so self satisfied I felt like singing, I didn’t of course, you don’t want others to know you had been struggling, if you do they’ll make it more so.

From that point on fixed gear became my favourite mode and even when a hilly route dictated gears I could ride with confidence in a gear I could stay on top of.

To emphasise the point, I have ridden all our reliability rides, 100, 150, and 200 kilometre on fixed gear, plus our ‘All night ride’, I have a club ‘Night Owl’ badge or two for that. The all night ride takes in Belmont, Salmesbury Bottoms, over Mellor, Ribchester, Geoffrey Hill, Chipping, Trough of Bowland, Forton Services and back down the A6. Those rides have been very eventful, riding the hills in pitch dark is easier when you can’t see them, a great event. 

Years on, my favourite gear is now around sixty three inches, not a gear for riding with a fast group but one I can manage even with my dodgy knees, I find the low gear that whizzes my legs round on a downhill very therapeutic, it would be very dodgy if they seized up at 130 RPM.

I have just two bikes on gears, one hardly used as it’s set up for time trials, one for hilly rides and hostelling, the rest of my stable are fixies, a heavy shopper, one with mudguards, two road going track, two track specific and one rusty heap permanently mounted on a turbo trainer.

I just love riding on my own on fixed gear, it can seem hard going uphill at times but the exercise is very anaerobic, gears in reverse, big gear uphill, low gear down and I don’t have to keep up with anyone.

If you try fixed gear riding, beware, it could become addictive and become like me, a fixed wheel nut.