Singlespeed & Fixed Gear - Why William is limping today.

So now I've graduated to riding the fixed to work (trolley/ride combo)..

And you know how it is.. you're not late, you're early.. and you're basically zig zaging the streets in the morning, just winding around, finding new routes.. greeting the homeless.. and I spy an alley up a ahead that I can use to by pass a light, skip pass the tracks.. I pick up speed a little as I come up the corner.. and

Old habit: Stand up on the cranks before you round a corner and glide through the turn... you know, take a peak.. see what's there.. see if there's a way through.

But subtle reminder. This isn't my 2000 canondale r600 double... It's a 1972 Nishiki Kokusia.. fixed. And as the crank comes up and my sleepy mind tells my left leg to straiten and be lifted up and my right leg to straiten and hold in place..

The bike reminds me that movement doesn't cease until the tires stop and I'm virtually thrown over the side of the bike, and my hip screams as my leg comes around in a manner that's not compliant with the range of motion it's intended to have.. nearly over the bars I snap back into place and hoble down to a slower pace.

Nice little reminders..

So today I'm walking around the house with a limp and a smile.

Anyone else do stupid things like this?

stupid things? i guess learning brakeless is stupid. but scary, i have a few. cars never seem to use their rightside mirrors when making turns and always like to cut me off. one guy ran me into the gutter last week when i was on my fixed. luckily i was going slow enough to get out of the situation. last week it was started raining during my class and continued to rain after my soccer game. i figured the safest way home would be riding through campus since it was 11 pm and who is going to be out in the downpour. low and behold, i come around a turn and there is a group of people standing right where i need to go. brakes or no brakes, stopping would have been hard. it was either:

a) hit the people
b) hit the curb or attempt to hop it
c) stick the 1 foot gap between the farthest person and the curb

so i just unclipped one foot and didn't say anything since i didn't want people jumping in front of me. i stuck the line and squeezed through. all i heard was a bunch of shocked and "nice" words coming from the group as i rode away. it was an adrenaline rushed and reminds me of sticking a good line mountain biking.

the one time i did it was when i was still using both brakes and no toe clips...so instead of being tossed, my front foot just came off the pedal and i sort of did this weird standing up on one leg giant cirlce thing before getting really freaked out and sitting back down again.

i think we've all pulled that move one time or another. i find it happens to me if ive been riding a freewheeling bike prior to my fixed. never fallen bc of it, just bucked around

i did very nearly the same thing in my first week of commuting on my fixed gear. i got bucked around a few times, but i actually bit it hard once...

i was crossing a street and heading up to a lockup point in front of a computer store that i was looking to buy some mac stuff at... and there was no ramp up over the curb onto the sidewalk, so i decided to bunny hop it. i time it, etc... and as i reach the point i (just like hopping on my road bike) start coasting to flex my knees and get the max jump, the bike bucks and tries to toss me over the front. this had happened before, no big deal, my reaction was to just relax and kinda go gumbo in the legs and recover.

of course, just as i'm recovering my front wheel hits the curb and i go endo. :D

Not a crash story. The first time I had a foot come loose, I was coming out of the bottom of a turn on the track. I realized the cranks were moving too fast to get my foot back in, and I didn't want to leave one foot in and whack my other leg with the pedal...So, I pulled out the other foot, leaned forward, stuck my legs out backwards (and clear of the spinning cranks) and rode Superman style until I could coast up the wall and slow things down.

I wasn't racing, but there were a lot of people around. Some alternatives are worse than crashing.

the one time i did it was when i was still using both brakes and no toe clips...so instead of being tossed, my front foot just came off the pedal and i sort of did this weird standing up on one leg giant cirlce thing before getting really freaked out and sitting back down again.

not sure why really, but that caused me to laugh good and hard. thanks. i needed that.
dan

not me, but my dad took my fixed gear down my street one day to "see what it was like" he makes it down the street fine but coming back as he rides by the house he apparently thought he coast by me...and ended up tossing himself off the bike into a bush...I don't think I've ever laughed that hard. He sticks to his Klein now and calls fixed gears works of the devil :D

First time I rode my fixie to work I came up on one of the downtown DC craters, which resemble the pothole the Illinois Nazis drove into in the Blues Brothers movie. On my mountain bike I had just lined up the three-foot wide 'x' three-to-five inch deep crevasse and bunny-hopped it. Without thinking, and going at a pretty good clip, I started preparing for the same maneuver by getting my pedals parallel to the street and coasting for a second (doh!)....Needless to say, I didn't coast. Well, not until the cog and lockring spun free and I threw my chain. Then I was able to coast the remaining block I had left. Of course, this was after going through the pothole doing a bad (good?) Luke Perry in '8 Seconds' impersonation. Yeeehah! Cowboy!