Aye, Craig and Ian, me first adult foray into fixed (and now just normal riding, how quickly things change to “normal”! Grin.) The trike I used to deliver “pizza” to my parents in the backyard was fixed, so not my first experience. Grin.
Uh oh, Philip, did I inspire my way out of an old threaded fixed eccentric hub? Fantastic! Build it, ride it, love it! Grin. Rich, it’s funny, but it no longer feels like underbiking, especially with the knobbie Steilacoom tires. It’s now just biking. Grin. Oh, there’s been an adjustment period. And I’ve a lot to learn. I’ve a ways to go yet on rock and root pedal navigation in the various narrows. I’m settling in wonderfully to the long descents. Nearly twenty miles of mountain pass descending is a lot of backpedaling. Grin. Practice makes perfect, and I’m definately improving. I’m finding that the “spin out” point has a surprising way of holding itself in balance, perhaps because the pedals have to push the weight of my legs round? Lots of nuance, and the bike is an amazing teacher. Random comments over the last few days, from the trail and the Pikes Peak Highway, as there have been a very large number of comments compared to usual, though the Quickbeam doesn’t look any different. “You can bike this snow and ice?” “Now THAT’S climbing!” “You’re my hero! Boy. How often do you ride this? You’re my hero!” This last one from a robustly rotund man at the overlook on the Pikes Peak Highway, who rambled onto the road to meet me in his excitement. I laughed and suggested he may want to pick a higher benchmark. He wasn’t sure what to do with that, but kept pronouncing I was his hero as he ambled back to his car. I was laughing for the for the next several miles, which on that climb is about 30 minutes. Grin. That whole “you MUST use pedal retention to ride fixed!” law? Bunk. Doing just fine on spikey platforms. Feet haven’t flown off once. I’m guessing here, but I’m likely doing 180-200 pedal rotations per minute at the spinout. Climbing I’m as little as 30 in places, but that’s right on the edge of LCG is faster. Grin. All in all, I’m like a duck to water with fixed riding. It’s so intuitive and self evident. The comments I’ve seen about “you have to always be focused” “It’s intense” make no sense to me. That’s always the case. But I find fixed riding more engaged and contemplative and flowing. Delicious! With abandon, Patrick -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
