for me, my track bike is the bike i love the most. ask onetinsloth because i practically cried when i stripped my rear hub. it was an impulse buy since khs sponsors the berkeley team and the price was way cheaper than my proposed project price. hell, i just bought a new wheelset which was more than i paid for the whole bike. i guess that speaks for how much i love my track bike. the way i see it, everytime i ride my fixed gear is an adventure. i love the feel of being able to regulate speed solely with my legs, pedaling through corners and sprinting past people on geared bikes. riding fixed for me at first was a little weird, but i don't think i could ever ride anything else for getting around town. yes i have two other geared bikes (and an ss project in my basement), but i find myself riding them less since more things are on it to break and it's not as fun. i train on my road bike and haven't been able to build up a fixie with brakes for the hills here.

while you may think it's harder since your always pedaling, you'd be surprised how much power you lose from the chain going through so many pulleys and gears. it's HUGE. there are less things to break. less to worry about. and it's always a great conversation starter, "oh yea. my bike doesn't have brakes."

riding brakeless has taught me "how to ride" rather than always worrying about something stupid like braking in time or what gear to shift into or why my derailleur is rubbing my chain.

i like all of my bikes equally, but no matter what, i always end up wishing at some point during the ride that i was on my bmx. that bike is a god damned tank, and i'm fast on it, plus i can hop over stuff and do manuals through intersections and just have a ton more fun on it...granted, powersliding through a gap in traffic on a track bike has a definite joy all it's own, but i think my heart will always belong to bmx. people tend to keep their distance in traffic if i'm riding it.

hey stinkeh!!! let's get together sometime soon and break some sh1t! and also, can you get me that jersey i was talking about before? the all black one with the giant skull and crossbones on the front? oh, and what's the word on the bolts for the new wheel?

oh yeah, the brakeless thing gets people going...they're all like "OH EMM EFF GEE!!!! ARE YOU NUTS!?!? HOW DO YOU STOP!?!?!"

speaking of your mind at work...
someone once wrote on a messenger list something to this effect:

"riding fixed no brakes gives you the ability to see into future by about 5 seconds."

i have to completely agree. a very useful clairvoyant ability that can be applied to a lot of things in life beyond biking.

Dennis

exactly...you've got to know what people are gonna do before they even know what they're gonna do...