Friday, July 2, 2010

My conversion to fixed gear riding

I cannot tell how it all began. To be sincere I've never been interested in fixed-wheels. Some time ago I read Sheldon's article on fixies but it arose no real interest in me. There were too many odd things about it: Why should anybody wish to renounce to multiple gears? Who would like to strain his tendons unnecesarily? , Is coasting really that bad? What's a "misthycal connection to the bike"?  Nevertheless, something unadvertedly  got ingrained in my brain since a month or so before BPB the idea of a fixed-wheel conversion started to turn over and over in my mind. Well, maybe it was that guy I saw walking a neatly repainted old frame what triggered it all. Yes, perhaps I got stunned at its elegant simplicity.Two weeks ago I finally stopped beating around and went straight fort it.  There were , though, some hurdles to overcome. First one: wife persuading (I'd already been firmly told  "no more bikes welcome" and I'm not going to detail how I did it; suffice to say that... I did it). Second one: the budget. How much was I intending to spend? Fortunately there was an old Romani frame (sorry, no fork) that I got for free from a bike shop and there were lots of spare parts roaming around the garage. I only needed to invest some money in specific missing parts like a track hub and a chain set. Where could I get these oddities? After some web search I found  three or four promising shops in Barcelona. One good day I took a day off and visited one of them. No need to say that I stepped out poorer but happier.  Now I had all the pieces around but with BPB looming I opted to put any fixie delusions aside.

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