"WHAT?? NO BRAKES??"

WHAT?? No brakes??

“WHAT?? You can’t ride a bicycle like that in this traffic!” That was the reaction I got a while back when people found out that I ride a track bike in the city. A meeting had just broken up, and I was warned that there had been a rash of car break ins in the parking lot. My co-workers were concerned that someone would steal my bike. “No problem” I said, “it’s locked with a Kryptonite U-lock. And it’s a track bike. Fixed gear. You can’t coast on it – and it has no hand brakes. They won’t make it across the parking lot before bailing or crashing”.

You would have thought a bomb went off in the room. You know, like those old movies of A-bombs. It was quiet for a split second, then this huge uproar starts.

If you ride a fixie, you know what I mean. The kindest thing said was the first sentence of this blog entry. It went downhill from there. Never mind my riding background, which everyone there knew. There is NEVER a shortage of people that are willing to immediately condemn you for riding a bike with “No Brakes”.

Just one problem with this, though. Everyone is dead wrong about the brakes.Because you DO have a braking system on a “fixie”. As a matter of a fact, you have more than one. And in this way, it’s actually safer that a freewheel bicycle with hand brakes.

 If you ride a fixie, you know the secret that the cubicle dwellers don’t understand – the main braking system on a track bike is the drive train itself.

When you want to slowdown, you simply resist the motion of the cranks with your legs. If you need to stop fast, you stand tall, lean forward, and skid.  Or do a Fred Flintstone and drag your feet. Or just bail off if everything else fails. Simple, man. 

As opposed to a freewheel bicycle, where you are really SOL if the hand brakes fail. I have seen this happen in road races, and it’s pretty ugly. No way to stop when a freewheel bike fails. So you can make a good case for a fixie being actually safer than a modern road or mountain bike. 

Of course, I didn’t bother trying to run this all by all of the “desk chimps”. The problem with "them" isn’t a lack of cycling knowledge, it’s something that runs deeper than that.

That meeting was held in an office where people sit in cubicles and write emails for 8 hours a day.  No real   contact with people,  other than in a“meeting”, which is like getting locked in a cage with a bunch of werewolves and zombies. Really, hungry, werewolves and zombies.  So after a long day of all this, most office workers dash to their cars and trucks for the drive home, only to sit in bumper to bumper traffic for as long as two hours.

Then they get up the next day and do it all over again. Fun life, eh?

Pretty tough to be happy when you live like that. So, I ride a bike. My fixed gear bike, with NO BRAKES! It’s not for everyone, but it gives me something special and fun to do every day.  Riding a fixed gear bicycle is like sailing a boat. When you rely on the wind instead of a motor, you become more aware. You take notice of everything around you. All of your senses are engaged, and the world comes alive.

There is a little adventure every time you get onto a fixie. That’s what we call fun. Something I see missing on the grim zombie faces that whiz by me in their cars and trucks every day. After all – how can you have any fun in life if you are always out of touch with the world?

The picture of the chimpanzee at the start of this entry is from a circus act long ago.  You know life must have sucked for the little guy. He had to put on a suit,  put on a show, dealing with demanding people, living a life that was entirely unnatural for him.

Kind of sounds like life in the office world, doesn’t it?

But take a good look at him, and you realize two things.

He’s riding a bicycle – a fixie at that. And he’s smiling.