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PeterD "...My first experience of fixed was about 10 years ago when my dad cycled the lands end to john o groats run on a fixed wheel...there and back....at the age of 60!!"

What a guy! I bet you'll be lejogging fixed before you know it Peter! I did it geared last year, it was wonderful. Definately gonna do it again some day (....not sure about the gearing though).

My first bike was a 1973 Raleigh Tempest, bloody 'orrible but dad wouldn't spring for a Tomahawk/Chopper... Rode that 'til I couldn't stand the 'Oi! Like the girl's bike mate!' taunts any longer and bought a 5 speed Arena off a Turkish bloke in my block for a fiver, whacked some cowhorns on it and that was that, hooked! Me and my mates going mad everyday after school and at weekends on the 'Monkey Hills' in Battersea Park...
Coupla cheap (probably stolen) MTBs followed which in turn got nicked then I picked up a 70s 5 speed Motobecane in the early 90s for peanuts, stuck some nice light wheels a neighbour gave me on it and picked up some 2nd hand lo-pro bars from Dawes Road Cycles for a fiver (I was a poor musician!) and rode around all day just for the fun of it, mostly pretending to be a courier... Loved it! Considered becoming a courier but my courier mates put me off... Shagged my knees cuz I didn't know how to spin properly and had to stop riding for a while (2-3 years)... Motobecane got nicked, I cried...
Once my knee caps sorted themselves out I started commuting to Canary Wharf from Chelsea on a brand spanking new 2000 Bad Boy, always missed my road bike tho' and felt I'd made a bad choice, after a while I got bored and the Bad Boy got left in the shed...
Last coupla years I'd been snooping around for a track bike to get the buzz back again but couldn't find anything i liked so I bought a BMX off the Bay and really got back into messin' around on bikes for the fun of it... Earlier this year my flatmate's old Rockhopper got nicked when we were burgled so he went out and bought a Lemond Fillmore and that was that! I had to get another road bike... Bad Boy went on Gumtree...
Not sure if I can handle riding fixed my knees are 'proper' shagged, but I've got one now, as well as the bling SS that's taking forever to build so I'm gonna give it a good go and see how I get on... Bit scary at first...
That's my (overly long, sorry, I'm quite old) bike life-story! Just love bikes! Drives my girlfriend crazy, unless she's gettin' a backie on the BMX that is, she LOVES that... Stooopid sexy trick nuts! ;-)

kipsy PeterD "...My first experience of fixed was about 10 years ago when my dad cycled the lands end to john o groats run on a fixed wheel...there and back....at the age of 60!!"

What a guy! I bet you'll be lejogging fixed before you know it Peter! I did it geared last year, it was wonderful. Definately gonna do it again some day (....not sure about the gearing though).

We will see eh? Its actually quite sad though. My dad now suffers terribly from bad nerves in his legs and bad ankles which make it impossible to ride any more. It must be so frustrating...he's got about 15 bikes in the garage and cant ride one of them.
He offered me his fixed once but i turned it down on principal. Did get a tidy J.B Allan steel frame off him though which im currently building up. Got alot of respect for his cycling history and although i hated it when i was 12...(sometimes doing up to 100 miles in a day with him) it has taught me alot. Just wish i'd paid more attention when he was building his bikes up.

im a hipster

well i haven't ridden since i was younger and i realized that i totally should be.
i went on a trip to Cornwall a few years ago and took a friends old mtb and rode it from coast to coast with out a map.

thats how i remembered the joy of riding but hated all the problems with the gears, like cracking your nuts on the top tube up a hill

a few months later i met Rosie and she was riding everywhere,

then a couple of weeks after that i find a bike in a skip and wonder what the fuck is wrong with it,

"its broken cause the pedals keep turning and they touch the front wheel" so i did a bit of research and realised i had found someones fixed wheel winter trainer.
thats about the time i started talking to roberto,

anyway i cleaned the bike up as best i could and i was rolling and loving every second, untill it threw the chain very late one night on a main road and i did the mother of skidds, this happened again and i realized that the frame and wheels were not true. It was time to buy a new bike, naturally fixed wheel.

got my overdraft extended and blew it all on a new bike leaving no money for food or rent but i was a happy bunny

now i am obsessed and want everything in my life to have pedals.

We will see eh? Its actually quite sad though. My dad now suffers terribly from bad nerves in his legs and bad ankles which make it impossible to ride any more. It must be so frustrating...he's got about 15 bikes in the garage and cant ride one of them.
He offered me his fixed once but i turned it down on principal. Did get a tidy J.B Allan steel frame off him though which im currently building up. Got alot of respect for his cycling history and although i hated it when i was 12...(sometimes doing up to 100 miles in a day with him) it has taught me alot. Just wish i'd paid more attention when he was building his bikes up.

Moderation is very much the key then to a long cycling career. My Dad lost a leg at 19yo motorcycling....but still manages to cycle 10 or so miles a day which I think is gr8.

Regards to your oldman PeterD, it must be tough.

Rode loads as a kid. when i was in brighton i put posters and flyers in pubs and bars all over town and cycled that, cycled to college on my radford mtb. then stopped for a few yrs, moved to ldn, got a orange clockwork to commute/ride woods on. then found it too clunky for the commute and is a bit of a waste of a decent bike on london roads..

so got a 10yr old mint dawes ultra racer off ebay for £136. found that i could ride everywhere in the hardest gear, fixed it last week at brick lane bikes and love it.

So quick, so quiet!

I don't ride fixed. Used to. Didn't like it.

Coasting is the best part of cycling (IMO). I know I'm not gonna win many friends here saying this but just being honest.

Been riding bikes since I was physically able:
little kiddie bikes
Raliegh Striker (mini grifter)
Raleigh Styler (Basically a Mag Burner but yellow)
Sid Standard Superbe 531 tubed Racer
MS Racing MTB (company later stopped making bikes under their own name and made bikes under the alpinestars name - alpinestars being the motorcycling clothing brand. Was one of the first alu MTB's - still got it and it works fine)
A long long time riding these two bikes.
Gave Superbe back to my dad when he was worried about me breaking it as I was becoming fascinated with trying to be a stunt biker
Raleigh Record Ace - converted to single speed then to 6 gears.
Raleigh framed (?) fixed wheel later converted to single speed freewheel
Paragon fixed - only a loan really from my dad, had to give it back when I got so scared about scratching it I stopped riding it all together (its very nice)

Plus a few more BMX's along the way as an adult (some Dyno thing, Schwinn Hydramatic, converted 80's night burner, Redline John Purse sig cruiser)

and a cast of loads more randoms that I've had and broken quickly, sold quickly, given away etc...

The remaining bikes (I still have around half of them) are in England. But I'm in Australia. Whilst here I've accumulated:
Melbourne bikes MTB
Gemini racer (nothing special, Exage grade stuff)
and a "Dutch bike" which cost me $10 and is amazing. I probably ride this one more than the others.

Being as I don't ride fixed and don't live in London you may wonder why I come here (infrequently). I just like bikes and talking about them. I find the whole fixed craze quite funny. It's like the Skateboarding craze about 10 years ago but for ppl a bit more grown up. I think its great though. More bums on bike seats is a very good thing imo.

I may build myself up a fixed wheel when I get back to England. I have a dream single speed commuter build in mind so may as well make it flip flop. But honestly I just don't like riding fixed.

BTW I've always had access to fixed and other bikes (my dad is a collector) so its not like I've not had the exposure.

Hey Tallsam, Whereabouts in Australia are ya? I'm moving to Brisbane next year, can't wait to leave London behind... :-D
Saw tons of hardcore cyclists while I was there over xmas/new year, lotsa knee-crunchin' hills in that town...

Being as I don't ride fixed and don't live in London you may wonder why I come here (infrequently). I just like bikes and talking about them. I find the whole fixed craze quite funny. It's like the Skateboarding craze about 10 years ago but for ppl a bit more grown up. I think its great though. More bums on bike seats is a very good thing imo.

I remember the skateboarding craze as being 30years ago!? (bolocks, did I miss another one?)

Is my memory starting to go......

I'm with Kipsy on this one, I remember going down to South Bank on roller skates in the early 80s with my mates* (we were kiddie punks and just jumped off/onto stuff whereas all the 'cool' kids wore cut-off sweats, satin shorts and headbands and roller-danced to disco) *and an old schoolmate Stephen was the only guy on a skateboard, plus a coupla kids on BMXs but that was it... We had the whole place to ourselves playing street hockey with a tin can...
Ahh, the memories...

kipsy [quote]Being as I don't ride fixed and don't live in London you may wonder why I come here (infrequently). I just like bikes and talking about them. I find the whole fixed craze quite funny. It's like the Skateboarding craze about 10 years ago but for ppl a bit more grown up. I think its great though. More bums on bike seats is a very good thing imo.

I remember the skateboarding craze as being 30years ago!? (bolocks, did I miss another one?)

Is my memory starting to go......[/quote]
I think there is a resurgent craze for skating every ten years or so. The one i was involved happened around 88' / 90, the birth of streetskating today in my book.

cool thread :)

I've been riding bikes my whole life, pretty much.. had a couple of 16 inch bmxs when I was a kid and loved hopping around. Those got stolen and my parents bought be a "proper" bike, a crappy 26" MTB. I still enjoyed cycling around, but it really wasn't that much fun to be honest, I hated chains popping off and stuff just generally not working.

Couple years later, 1998 the bmx freestyle worlds were held in Portugal - I had been following bmx on tv for a while but that was my chance to convince my parents I wanted to be a bmxer! So got my first bmx on the 23rd of September 1998. Happiest day of my life.

Obviously that first "real" bmx didn't last long, so I kept buying parts and frames and upgrading as I could. I figure I have spent close to 2 thousand pounds on parts over the last 9 years.. I still ride bmx and I can't even consider stopping that, NOTHING will ever beat the feeling of flying 6ft up in the air and flowing through a set of trails (dirt jumps, not mtb trails).

When I moved to london last year, I needed a bike to commute, so bought a £30 mtb at bricklane from the chinese dudes. I used that for a month and then it got stolen while I was away in Portugal. Went back to bricklane and the only bike the chinese dudes had was a single speed peugeot. That was my first "road bike", drop bars and all.. Rode it to work a few times but it was the middle of winter and I just couldn't get used to both cycling in the rain and a completely different bike, so didn't get to use it that much.

That was stolen a month ago while I was back in Portugal (hmm.. I see a pattern here).

After looking around again, I decided to get a similar bike, as simple as it could get. I ride my bmx brakeless, no pegs, just the bare essentials. I wanted something similar out of a road bike, so decided to get a fixed. That's it, been riding it for a couple of weeks and enjoying it quite a lot.. Still getting used to a few things but it'll all work out.

Riding all my life one way or another. Choppers at Uni cos I thought they look cool. I like my fixeds cos they look cool too but mainly ride them for the simplicity and maintenance. Been riding my track bike for three and a half years and have had a whole host of second/project fixies during that time too. Doing the London2Brighton in 2004 I came across only two other guys riding fixed. We shared a knowing smile. One of them said 'it's the only way to fly' - that has stuck with me ever since.

Oh, and reckon I must be personally responsible for persuading at least ten others to ride fixed. All of whom have not looked back.

Skateboard craze 10 years ago..?! There was one only 3 years ago, at most :) Skating/BMXing is pretty big in my town, the council seem quite willing to spend money on skate parks.

teenslain Hey Tallsam, Whereabouts in Australia are ya? I'm moving to Brisbane next year, can't wait to leave London behind... :-D
Saw tons of hardcore cyclists while I was there over xmas/new year, lotsa knee-crunchin' hills in that town...

Melbourne. Home of Phil Anderson, The Hell Ride, Track Cunt (I think most of you know who he is). Oh and tour newbie's: Simon Gerrans and Brett Lancaster

Cycling seems to be bigger in Aus than in the UK but then they do have the weather. Also most main roads are huge (like 6 lanes) and lots have bike paths but even if they don't there is always space for the cars to go round without getting too close. Doesn't stop some ppl trying to show you the back end of their car in great detail though.

Also it helps that they have so many good tour cyclists.

kipsy [quote]Being as I don't ride fixed and don't live in London you may wonder why I come here (infrequently). I just like bikes and talking about them. I find the whole fixed craze quite funny. It's like the Skateboarding craze about 10 years ago but for ppl a bit more grown up. I think its great though. More bums on bike seats is a very good thing imo.

I remember the skateboarding craze as being 30years ago!? (bolocks, did I miss another one?)

Is my memory starting to go......[/quote]

Yeah then too. I guess it kinda got popular again. Whoever said its 10 year cycles is probably right. I just remember in about 96 I got a new board after not having one for a good 5 years or so. I gave up soon after. I'm shit. Taught me not to follow crazes. :)

I forgot to add that I had a Harry Hall frame that I was making into a single speed before I left. I was taking way too long doing it so I kinda bodged together the last few parts. It was never a great ride. Gave it to my dad who is gonna undo all my work and turn it into yet another geared roadie. Might pinch it back when I return though.

eeehhhh Skateboard craze 10 years ago..?! There was one only 3 years ago, at most :) Skating/BMXing is pretty big in my town, the council seem quite willing to spend money on skate parks.

where is it you live?

had a 531 framed singlespeed conversion that I tried to hack up highgate hill every day till the rear dropout cracked. Got on a fixed a few years ago but my skills haven't advanced with the years.
IMO main thing is that whether it's a fashion thing now we can't let it eventually become unfashionable. For that to happen everyone, hipster or nay, has gotta stay on their fix and remember why they love riding. but someone's probably said it already. What i mean is: don't let your fix become a trilby (sorry trilby wearers ;-) i have one too somewhere)

alright, my little story...

i never really rode BMX or skated though i had a BMX when i was 8 and had a skateboard i got for free from a friend which i never used.
only started riding last year in june when i went to paris to stay with my friend. he's a bike freak so he got me on the saddle of a marin hybrid to get around town with him. only then did i realise how enjoyable it is to ride a bike, and it really is the quickest way of getting around!

got a 21 speed 80's steel condor tourer when i came back to london. 2 months later i found an '88 peugeot triathlon sitting in my friend's yard half dead so i rescued it and this is when i started tinkering with bikes, building it back up into a decent ride. at the same time got aware of fixed and started reading sheldon (who doesn't when you start getting your tools out?), saw a few fixed bikes around town and wished i had one, but didn't have the money and didn't really want to convert the 2 bikes i have.

it wasn't until i started talking to punkpixel about bikes he really got me into getting one. trawled around the bay without results and waited till the herne hill jumble. bought the green vitus, relaced the back hub onto a clincher rim, fitted a front brake and never looked back.

i still ride my geared bikes and still like it, not as much as fixed though...
the peugeot's doing rain duties at the moment as i build up my 2nd fix. the condor i'm selling it to a friend.

I never has ride a bike, isn't it, but I sees people is got bike with no geers, so I do same= ace !

Bought a second hand road bike about 12 months ago now, always ridden BMX's before and didnt really ever bother shifting gears so pulled em all off and rode it single speed for a few months. Then decided it was time to go fixed and the rest is history. For me riding fixed is really similar feeling to basic skateboarding. Ive always just enjoyed a laid back street style of skating kinda gonz esque and get the same feeling weaving through traffic in town. Plus fixed wheel skids are basically 4 wheel powerslides to me, the best skateboarding trick ever!!

Aidan a (Turd Ferguson) got me into cycling around the time of my 19th birthday (late April of this year).
Persuaded me to buy a cheapish 2nd hand road bike off of the bay. Now, I learned to ride a bike like everyone else did when they were yay high, but frankly at the age of 19 I hadn't even got on a bike since about the age of 12.
So I had a bit of a crash course (and several near death experiences) more or less learning to ride a bike again on the back streets of Southwark. Since getting back into bikes I have yet to change gear once, as the old Raleigh had its gears on the lower tube, and when I first started riding any attempt to remove a hand from the handlebars resulted in instant embarrassment & pain. Therefore the progression to proper single-speed was an easy one, with a new set of wheels and a bit of modification to the cranks. This came just before the May Critical Mass, which was a really pleasant night and that was when I really started to want a fixie. Fastforward a few months and I finally plucked up the courage and raided my savings for a bianchi pista, which i then crashed horrifically & more or less instantly, but survived (and so did the bike). So now here I am riding gingerly in London on a fixed and loving it! Hurrah.

unxetas [quote]eeehhhh Skateboard craze 10 years ago..?! There was one only 3 years ago, at most :) Skating/BMXing is pretty big in my town, the council seem quite willing to spend money on skate parks.

where is it you live?[/quote]

Basingstoke.

I know of a lot of people who still skate/ride regularly and have done for years. The skate park in the town's main park is pretty much packed every evening, not just with drunks but people actually riding. There was a really resurgence though 3 years ago, but it's always been pretty steady.

always been a cyclist, from that first blue and white tricycle, got given (after extended period of begging) a raleigh burner, loved it dropped it, fell off it more than once, then just stopped riding it. It got given to a cousin. I didn't ride again until I brought a Kona Cindercone, when I was about 18, back when everyone and his aunt was getting a mountain bike, and if you could get a Marin, you were like the Don!!!. Ride that bike come rain or shine, always on the road, never on the dirt. Couriered on it for a year or so. It was my main transportation round london town. Fast forward ten or so years, pass my motorbike test, buy a motorbike, start riding that, drop it a couple of times, fall off a couple of times, break leg, have operation to insert pin in knee, on crutches for six or so months. Cycling my only constant form of exercise, so after accident, get back on bike and ride to work during the summer, fall in love with it again, the hustle and bustle of city riding, losing muppets in traffic, jumping lights, hitting a good piece of tarmac. Decide to buy a bmx for tooling around on. Get a friend to custom build an old GT. Love that, trying to teach myself how to wheelie and bunny hop, but don't have as much time on my hands as when i was 12.

Friend gets a fixed gear a pista eom, I laugh at him, tell him he's a nutter, he doesn't listen to me, rides bike gets fast. I get some tax rebate money and spunk it on a soma smoothie from mosquito, ridden a steel bike all my life, alu's just too hard for me, so the Soma was the cheapest steel frame I could find. I also get sized and find out I've been riding in a very very bad position for the past 14 odd years. Can't ride my old bike as I wait for new bike to arrive, as I'm determined not to do any more damage to my battered old body. The wait is viciously long. Finally it arrives I ride it home and I'm in love. Who knew riding fast could be this easy. MY body doesn't ache, my legs feel fine, and I feel fast all the fscking time, even just slowly pedaling to the shops.

While searching and testing rides before I got the soma, rode condor's titanium moda. Fall in love with the magic metal, but can't afford it, spend hours on web searching for cheap titanium frames, to build up into a geared road bike. Keep getting outbid at the last minute, until whats this? A titanium track fame, just my size, and with no reserve. I put my money down and the next thing you know I've got it, comes all the way from china, via new york to ye olde south london. Think I'll build it up cheaply, but it keeps wanting the expensive, special bits. Should be ready by september. Fingers crossed and wallet allowing.

Got into this forum while searching out info on fixed bikes, brands, shops, hints and tips. Then when out for a ride with some of the west london massive and broke my fixed virginity on mashton's condor and 31trum's langster, and very scary it was indeed. Still have to shake myself to remember I'll be riding fixed thru the winter and to just keep pedaling. Keep pedaling.

cornelius - pictures of the titanium frame please :) I'd love a titanium bike.

When I was a kid my dad used to go and pick up an old frame at the local tip
he would clean it up
fit up some pretty bullit proof wheels and tyres
mount up these big chrome motorcycle style bars
with hand grips that used to have tassles on them
they were all single speed bikes because he was a tight old sod
and he wasn't going to cough up for fancy schmancy stuff like gears
I loved the bikes my dad built
I went everywhere on my bikes
and as I grew
he would just build me another one
time moved on
and in the early eighties I became a courier in London
and I got bang into riding hard and fast in the traffic
I did that for seven years and I loved every bloody minute of it
I lived in a squat and got involved with Moving Target
through MT I blagged a Chas Roberts hybrid
straight from the man himself
A bike that I would continue to ride for another fifteen years
each time it got wore out I just rebuilt it
over the years the wheels got skinner and the gears fell off
then one day I was thinking about fitting some bullhorn bars
and I surfed onto velospace http://velospace.org/node
they had all these bikes that looked like the bikes my dad built
(without the tassles)
within an hour I had found hubjub http://www.hubjub.co.uk/
and within a week I had all the parts on order
that was the spring 2006
I had never seen anyone riding a fixed in Paris before then
I love riding my fixed
But even more
I like building'em
Now I know why my Dad built my bikes
rather than just gone out and bought my bikes
there is something really satisfying about building bikes