Thought I'd post a summary of my first day messengering with gears - I know it's the fixed section of the site, but the contrast is interesting since I have only messengered on a brakeless fix previously. I got doored hard when a skid that I hit on the wet/snowy ground carried into a cab at full speed, so I decided to put gears back on this weekend.

The setup I'm using now is a 42t chainring in front with no derailleur, a 6 speed dura-ace cassette in the rear with 5 cogs and an extra spacer - 18, 16, 14, 13 and 12 (chainline gets pretty ***ed around 13 and 12). A simplex prestige RD with downtube friction shifter and suntour superbe brakes. Oh, and the clement tubular tire on the rear wheel improved my handling over the armadillo I had on before for skidding.

The first thing I noticed was that when I stopped pedaling my body tensed up and I felt like I was in danger. Especially going between cars, buses etc. I realized after a bit that I was so used to skidding when my feet weren't moving that my body was having some kind of reaction whereby it thought that I was skidding when I was freewheeling. Weird, I guess you really get used to riding fixed.

I didn't shift very often, and only between the 18 and the 16. Basically rode the 16 99% of the time, which is the gearing I had before. So one strike against gears (useless cog weight). However, I was able to deliver slightly faster with the gears than on the fix, since I had to slow down less going into red lights, near pedestrians, between cars etc. The fear of not pedaling went away after a couple hours. The cyclocross dismount (I use clipless MTB SPD) made dismounting a little quicker (I didn't do any of the crazy Kevin Bacon dismounts on my fix cause I can't figure out how to clip out and do them).

Most importantly, I found that I was able to track stand basically just as well on the geared bike as on my fix! This surprised me. By finding any kind of miniscule incline in the road (incline is the wrong word, more like slight rise), I could get into a track stand and hold it just as long as I could on the fix - definitely longer than any red lights and upwards of 3~4 minutes. 1-handed and no-handed track stands seemed harder so I didn't try it out. But still, this was pretty cool. The bike's desire to roll backwards on the incline functioned exactly the same as pedaling backwards to stay balanced.

Messengering on the fix was a little bit more fun (I really enjoy riding fixed cause of skids etc.), but the gears/brakes have the advantage of being somewhat faster and somewhat more safe (although not too much more safe - the skid into something in wet weather doesn't come up all that often as a problem and otherwise I think that brakeless fix is equally safe). I'm going to go with this setup for a bit and go back to the fix if things get dull. My bike definitely looked way, way, way better as a fixed gear - it's not even close in the style department. Somehow road drops just don't cut it when you had steel nitto pursuit bars on before. Plus I don't have aero brake levers so there are brake cables everywhere.

I'd definitely take this setup in a race over my fix, but for bicycling enjoyment the fix wins. Plus it's just unsettling to stop pedaling.