Ride two on the recumbent giraffe with a training wheel…
The complicated contraption in question is a road bike with dropped bars and a fixed wheel. The tyres are 700c x 23 mm pumped up to 110 psi. The bike is lightweight, with most of the weight being saved by not padding the saddle.
I live in an area where it would be unwise to ride my unicycle straight from the front door because:
[LIST=1]
However, riding a two-wheeler is marginally less of an obstacle to survival.
So I set off on the complicated contraption, complete with the bars raised an inch or so since my last ride.
On my last bicycle, a few years ago, raising the bars went like this:
[LIST=1]
That gave me as much freedom of position for the bars as I wanted between a certain minimum and maximum height.
On a modern bicycle, the process is as follows:
[LIST=1]
That means seven bolts, and two sizes of Allen key, to give me a choice between exactly two fixed positions.
I am told this is progress. It makes me feel old.
I am told that it saves weight. The weight saved is equivalent to the weight of the two Allen keys.
But I don’t like to grumble. I’m good at it, but I don’t like to do it. In fact, grumbling irritates me. Too much grumbling makes me moan.
So, on with the story, I set off down the short moderately steep hill that leads from my door. There is a T junction at the bottom. I decide to be hardcore and rely on the fixed wheel rather than the brakes. I apply back pressure to the pedals. My legs are thrown all over the place and I am lifted out of the saddle, then suddenly, all is peace and tranquility and I am freewheeling towards the junction.
Oooer! The sprocket has unwound. 
A brief examination shows that my briefs show no marks of surprise or fear.
A brief examination of the bike shows that neither of the two fixed sprockets has a lock ring to hold it in place.
I return home on foot, and remantle the bike. I will rely on the brakes from now on, until such time as I get some lock rings.
So, I ride down the next hill at a steady speed. Turning right is more difficult than on a “normal” bike because there is no freewheel, and the bars are so low. I find my view to the rear is difficult, and hand signals are a bit wobbly. But I make it, and then it’s a long slog up a medium steep hill.
On a normal bike, I would change gear and “twiddle” my way up. On a 6 speed, I would be in 1st gear; on a 12 speed, I would be in 1st gear; on an 18speed, I would be in 1st gear. On a fixie, I have no choice: I am in “only” gear. It’s a long hill, and soon, I am panting, grunting and sweating like a sailor on shore leave in Shanghai, but at last I make it to the top. Who needs gears, then?
And now it’s a long descent on a fairly busy fast road, with occasional speed bumps. Anyone would think I lived in exactly the wrong place to own a fixie!
There’s a mile or more of this descent, with junctions and all manner of hazards. I have to think about braking distances as if I were on a Coker: no stopping for 10 or more revolutions of the wheel. Read the road, and plan. Leave something in reserve.
I feel like I have a guilty secret. All the other road users just see a cyclist (if they see me at all) but I am the cyclist with no freewheel: I can ride but I can’t stop suddenly. Riding a fixie in heavy traffic has the same illicit thrill as “going commando” at the Queen’s garden party.
I imagine.
Although I don’t imagine it very often.
Honestly.
Soon I am on flatter ground, and I make steady progress. Slight inclines slow me down, as do slight declines. On flat sections I get some speed up, but I’m always aware of my stopping distance. I have brakes, of course, but somehow they seem less effective when you have to keep pedalling as you apply them!
And then I’m on the old railway bridge that is now a road bridge. It crosses the Trent, and was used as an “on location” film set, playing Checkpoint Charlie in a film about the Berlin Wall. It wasn’t this busy in the film: just a few soldiers, and the occasional actor “dying heroically”. Now it is solid with cars, and the bike is coming into its own.
For many years of my life I commuted on a bicycle. There is a special thrill to slicing through the traffic, seeing all, but unseen by most, reading the road, spotting the gaps, timing the burst of speed, sometimes getting it wrong and being stranded on the wrong side of the white line, sometimes overtaking a dozen cars in one move… I’m enjoying this.
And then a difficult right turn, where someone gives way to let me cross in front of him, and a quick burst through residential streets to my sister’s house.
She isn’t in.
So another quick burst, with one long fast stretch with my hands “down on the hooks” of the handlebars. I’ve had “racing bikes” before, but never used the dropped part of the bars. Now at 44, and less fit than I’ve ever been, I find that the right bike makes this sort of thing possible, at least in short bursts.
Until the sharp left approaches, and I need to get back “on the tops”, and the bike won’t let my legs stop spinning like… oh… things that spin… and the steering is so steep that I think a sudden change of position might put me in the ditch… but I make it.
Then I cruise through more residential roads, cursing the traffic calming. Skinny tyres at 7.5 bar, and a saddle carved from pummice (for light weight) combine to make this less than comfortable.
Then I’m at my dad’s house, and I stop and natter with the old so and so for a bit.
Back on the bike, I ride through residential roads that are perfectly flat. With no hills and no traffic lights, the fixie now makes more sense, and I feel perfectly comfortable. The bike is growing on me. It really is an honorary unicycle, because I know that on a conventional bike, I’d be fiddling with the gears, freewheeling (coasting) and generally having less of an “experience”. Riding the fixie focuses your mind in the same way that riding a unicycle does.
Old Habits Die Hard (did you see that? it was the one with Bruce Willis and the elderly nuns) and I soon find myself on the ramp that leads me down to the river bank. There are two tight turns on the ramp, where the ability to freewheel would be a bonus, but I get round safely.
Then it’s across the field (on a path) and along the river bank, past the kayak club house, the football ground, the rowing clubs, and down under Trent Bridge. The arch is no longer flooded, and now I can clearly see the tiny lip in the concrete that tripped me and gave me an “early bath” on the Bacon Slicer a few weeks ago.
Up onto the tarmac path that runs along the top of the concrete steps of “the embankment”. The river is high, but not in spate. The sun is out, although there is a lot of cloud. This summer, rain has always been imminent, except for when it has actually been raining.
And now the famous suspension bridge. How many times have I ridden over this on the Coker (now sold), the Road Razor (now sold), the Holy Roller and the Bacon Slicer? This is my first time on the Contraption, and it’s far from easy. The deck of the bridge is slatted, and the tyres are skinny and diamond hard. I need to stand on the pedals and keep pedalling, with no option to freewheel, and all this whilst avoiding pedestrians - and a young art student who feels the best thing she can be doing right now is sitting cross legged in the middle of the bridge, sketching it.
Down off the bridge, I get back across the grass to the tarmac and ride past flocks of Canada geese, and back under Trent Bridge, past two joggers. Then I find my way through the ornamental gardens and a short section of pavement until I rejoin the road.
I have a plan now: take the easy way home, avoiding the big hill. That means riding past the industrial estate, then past the race course. On a straight stretch of fast road, I get my head down and go for it. Youths on the cycle path shout mindless comments, “Ooooh, greeeaat biiike!” they say in an exaggerated drawl. So, it’s not just unicyclists who get it these days?
Through the back streets of Netherfield, bright jewel in the crown of Nottinghamshire, and more youths shout mild abuse, grunting and chanting as I ride past.
And now, a mile or two of gradual ascent where a slightly lower gear would be nice, but isn’t an option. So I do what I have to do: grit my teeth and pedal in the gear I’ve got. Surprisingly, it works.
Back to the house, that’s probably 12 miles or so covered, with a couple of big hills, and a range of conditions.
Verdict, a fixed wheeled bike is a good substitute for a unicycle when the ocnditions make unicycling impractical or unwise.
