First fixie ride

Today I got to do something I haven't been able to do in a long time: ride my bike to work. It's a funny thing really. When I worked at REI HQ (~30 miles from my house) I commuted by bike on a pretty regular basis. Of course it helped that we had a bike room, showers, and a cafeteria and my job didn't really involve having to meet people face-to-face. My new job is less than 5 miles from home (almost all of it downhill no less!) and yet after 7 months today is my first day of riding to work. Of course the new job lacks showers, convenient bike storage, and requires me to meet people for interviews which means having to look nice. This makes the whole bike to work thing a little more complicated.

I also got to take my fixed gear bike for a spin. The bike is a Raleigh Rush Hour. Pretty simple stuff: Reynolds 520 frame, uber beefy steel fork, and nice albeit generic components. I immediately ditched the dropbars and ordered some Nitto bullhorns (I'm using an old MTB flat bar in the interim). I also eliminated the rear brake and both brake levers. The front brake is operated with a modified SunTour power ratchet thumbshifter. It provides just enough braking power to keep the speed from getting out of hand on long descents and also as an emergency brake should the chain snap or derail. It's been a year since I last rode a fixie so my skid stop technique was a little rusty. On the flat section around Greenlake I was immediately reminded of why I love riding a fixie. There' s just something about tapping out a constant tempo that you can't replicate on a geared bike.

Long term I plan to highly modify the bike after being inspired by the Trackstar/DQM bikes. I've already picked up some chrome - not silver but actual chrome - handlebar tape and am also debating what color of Velocity deep-V rims to get. Pink? Green? Orange? Purple? So many possibilities....