I'm 55 years old and I built my first "fixed gear bike" in 1990 by replacing the rear dropouts on a used 52cm Peugeot PX-10 and realigning the frame to a 120mm rear spacing while I was working as a framebuilder. It was really more of an exercise than anything else because I had built just about every other kind of bike, but no fixed gears, so it mostly hung in the garage for the first year and a half after it was finished while I built several more mountain bikes and immersed myself in developing my climbing skills.

Then I attending a "track" night at CSU Dominguez Hills as the guest of a friend who rode track, and when I got home I decided to dust the Peugeot off and just pedal it around town when I didn't have plans to ride too far. The bike was fun to ride and I gradually ended up increasing the range that I would ride it, but the frame flexed too much when sprinting or climbing and I soon realized that I needed to build a dedicated fixed gear frameset. Before I did though I asked my friend if I could borrow his bike for a couple weeks to study how a true track bike handled and rode. By the end of the second week I was hooked.

I built a 52cm Columbus SPX frameset with a straight gauge downtube and tandem chainstays and a tandem unicrown fork. Man that bike was stiff, but it was rock solid and a blast to ride so it became my "other road bike", and I rode it regularly, often doing a 40 mile loop. There weren't many other fixed gear road bikes in my area and I really had no interest in riding track, so I mostly rode alone for about 10 years, then I gave it to a neighbor when I was "down-sizing". (I did keep the SS MTB though)

About four years ago I bought a Pake fixed gear frame and fork and built it up with dropped bars and a flip/flop rear wheel for road use only. I still have no interest in riding track, although I have ridden it on the Major Taylor Velodrome twice during "Night Rides", but I do really enjoy riding my "fixie" (it is not a track bike and it was built for the road) through the rolling hills and rural roads around north Indy. I also enjoy introducing other cyclist to both single speed and fixed gear.

My Pake certainly isn't pretty or trick, but it is my bike of choice quite often when I just want to get out on the road and relax, and I love the simplicity and serenity of it. Thank you to BF and TT for the forum.....


Oh yeah, I still have SS29er MTB too. It just doesn't get ridden as much.