It’s only been a couple of days since my friend’s husband “Mr S.” helped me to get the last bits of my bike together, and I’ve just loved it.
It’s been a little slow going, since I have to reverse pedal to slow down the bike, and since this isn’t a single-speed coaster bike, but rather a fixed gear sans brakes I’ve had to be extra, extra, extra careful on my commute.
That said… I love it
It’s funny, I’m very new to fixies, and within the past ~two years, I’ve been seeing more single gear bikes on the road. Naaive me, assumed that they were all fixies. Well, know the saying that if you own a pink car, you see pink cars everywhere? I now see that many people have freewheel hubs on their bikes, and many of the people that I’ve been seeing without hand brakes were using reverse pedal brakes.
Now, the thing that I very quickly learned to appreciate with my lovely “death bike“, is that it’s not very easy slowing down with just reverse pressure on the pedals. With my fixie, the forward kinetic energy is directly translated through the chain, and into the pedals, in a forward motion. I can’t lock the back wheel to brake, because I would first have to overcome my weight x speed.. which isn’t easy to do!
In the spirit of my franken fixie, I might scavance an old brake off of one of my other bikes and attach it to my front wheel. This would do wonders for my commute, as I wouldn’t have to be so sensitive riding next to streetcars, taxis, etc.
Is this love, or just the lust of a new fling?
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One Comment
Put your hips next to your bars to reduce (WxS), riding brakeless will be miserable if you don’t learn to skidstop, and quick.