Friday Follies ~~ Getting Fixed

Let me take you back in time.  The earth’s crust had only recently cooled, and manly men rode and raced bicycles.  In that day, I had a strong hankering to be like those men.  I started racing.  Massive volumes could be written covering the stuff I didn’t know. 

I had some good early results, but then things stopped.  I couldn’t seem to get much beyond a certain point.  So I looked to the Hard Men to try and learn what would make me better, stronger, able to win.

“You should ride velo,”  the Hard Men said.  I didn’t know velo from violins, but I was willing to try it.  With a little more guidance (emphasis on the word little) I found my way to a track and watched it.  Didn’t seem like such a big deal.  There were no gears, no brakes, and most importantly, no hills!  How hard could it be?

I understood, in a very theoretical way, that track bikes were fixed gear, that there was no coasting, no freewheeling, and no brakes.  Sure, you keep your feet moving on the pedals at all times that the bike is moving, and you slow the bike by reversing the direction of force on the pedals.

“It’s fairly simple,”  I was told.  “You control the bike with a combination of adverse pedaling, and forward.”  Pause,  “You should probably work on your trackstand too.”

I didn’t know what a trackstand was.  I soon learned what, but never really mastered the how of it.

For that matter, I never really “mastered” velo racing.  There were a lot of reasons for this; most of them involved lack of motivation.  I enjoyed going around the track.  Loved the smooth, steamroller feel of the track bike.  It was a huge kick to zoom through the banked turns at speed.  But the intricacies of racing on the track required skills…  skills that I just wasn’t motivated to master.

“You don’t have to ride velo,”  the Hard Men said,  “Ride the track bike on the road.  It is good conditioning.  Put the large tires on and ride in the weather.  It will make you strong for racing.”

I should mention a couple of things.  I lived in the south.  But not all of the south is sunny and warm all the time.  The mountains of Virginia experience Winter.  It snows.  It sleets.  It rains semi-frozen mush.  Also there are hills.  Big hills.

The combination of a track bike, with no brakes, no choice of gearing, and bad (often slippery bad) weather is less than auspicious.  Add in a pilot who is not experienced at cycling in bad weather, and only minimally proficient on a fixed gear bike.  Yup.  Recipe for disaster.

I lost traction.  I lost traction going up hills.  Worse, I lost it going down hills.  (Somewhere in the Virginia Highway Code, there must be a requirement to put a big, busy, complex intersection at the bottom of every steep hill.)

Slapping asphalt hurts.  Slapping asphalt in the Winter hurts more, and stings deeper.  Slapping asphalt, and sliding on it, in a mixture of slush, ice, road salt, grit, and frigid water hurts a lot.  And then you get to keep riding, in your soaking wet, beslimed clothing, in temperatures that were low, and are getting lower.  Not fun.

Eventually, I’d had enough.  I sold the track bike for a loss, and went on about my way.  I did, eventually, learn how to ride in nasty Winter weather.  It’s not easy, and it’s not fun.  (I don’t miss it.)

More recently in my life, I re-discovered single-speed and fixed gear bikes.  I’ve had a lot of fun with them.  They are good training tools.  All of mine have brakes.  It rarely snows here.  Our hills are not all that big.  I won’t go near a velodrome on one.