Hehehehehe... dear old Stanley (also known as ILTB) cannot help himself. Up to his old tricks. He's been like this since I started joining forums back in the late 1990s.

On this thread, he continually refers to internally gear hubs. Good on you , Stanley, but this discussion was never about internally geared hubs, some of which operate in an oil bath. It was about freewheels and freehubs operating in, I believe, freezing conditions. In North America, that pretty well means, frozen roads, where I have ridden, in temps down to -48 deg C (not Farenheit), and with grit and probably salt on the road.

Now, the issue that I commented on related to someone's comment that a "frozen" freewheel was to do with the grease. I simply stated it was more likely to do with the pawls and spring inside the freewheel; I didn't comment on whether it was to do with temperature or otherwise.

I have seen several cases of freehubs and freewheels give up because of corroson. This can be caused by ingress of water and in the case of winter riding in freezing conditions, can be accelerated rapidly by salt.

In fact, I have just doused a freewheel in water and put it in the freezer, and hey presto -- siezed!. Admittedly, it was pretty old, and didn't have much in the way of lubricant inside, but that's pretty well how most freewheels end up.

Good on you, again, Stanley. You likely have sealed internally geared hubs on your bikes that you use in winter. No issues there for you. But frankly, this was about a fixed gear project and the advantages or otherwise of going fixed gear compared with a normal derailleured bike.

If you wished to make a point, why didn't you just ask: "Why don't you go with an internally geared hub like an old Sturmey Archer or 3sp Shimano? They work well with me". And leave it at that.

As to the "flywheel" discussion, yes, in my experience, there is indeed an effect that helps me keep pedalling uphill with a kind of perpetual motion... and that has to do with getting the right gears and the steepness of the hill. I don't know the physics of it all, and frankly, I'd be bored to tears if someone explained it. Let's put it down to that zen thing that Stanley, in a strictly military sense, has such disdain for.

But someone would only know the sensation if they were to ride a fixed gear; otherwise, they aren't capable of making a salient comment. In fact, I can say that if they haven't ridden a fixed gear at all, they aren't competent to make any worthwhile comment about how they feel and their tangible advantages or disadvantages.

I repeat that this also is an issue about tinkering. It's about learning more about what makes bicycles operate. Which happens to be a very good thing.

PS: Jules, I have had a lot of experience with ILTB, aka <Removed>, on various other forums. Don't sweat it when someone comes up with a fairly good description of him... believe me, it's generous compared with the material Stanley has published about others. The strawman argument this time lies in the internally geared hubs that he introduced and are his primary point of argument.