Category: Why ride singlespeed

Here’s another good reason (Part 1 here):

• Because it’s not the fastest way to ride a bike. I’m hugely competitive, but that competition is directed at myself. Deliberately riding a bike that’s inefficient acknowledges where the real challenge lies: not in beating other people, not in achieving an 5% improvement in my average speed, but simply in sustaining my effort for the amount of time I want to ride for. And that’s not all – anyone who has ridden along a flat road with a 32:16 ratio (or, even worse, my usual ration of 32:18) cannot take themselves too seriously. And if they do need to watch the bit in The Goonies where the older brother gets dragged along by a car whilst riding a BMX – that’s what you look like with your little legs spinning like a pinwheel.

There’s a thousand and one answers to that question, but todays answer is:

• Because they work. Bikes with gears almost never work properly – a sticky cable here, a bent and bent-back mech hanger there, a worn casette, a wobbly front mech, a wobby rear mech, worn out jockey wheels, chainsuck, burrs on the chainrings…. the list of geared ailments goes on and on. They only really work new out of the shop and even then the cables stretch. That nagging feeling that my bike doesn’t work properly drives me mad and 2 cogs, 1 chain allows me to bypass all that and get on with riding.