Maiden Fixie Ride

Since completing my fixie build, I've been gagging to get out on the new rig. Finally the weather and family gods (or is that stars?) aligned and I was able to get out for the maiden ride. Since I'd never ridden a fixed gear bike before, I took the conservative (read: wimpish) approach and drove the bike to Centennial Park on the back of my car to avoid traffic and hills.

Once safely in CP, I could learn how to start and stop in peace, as well as confirm that I had put the bike together properly. As it turned out, starting off was easy, especially with the double-sided SPD pedals; it was the same technique that I use on my geared bikes. The only snag is getting the first pedal (in my case, the right) into the power position to push off. I ended up using two different techniques on different occasions:

• Lift up the saddle with my hand to allow my right foot to move the pedal
• Squeeze the brake and push forward on the bars to lift the rear wheel, then move the pedal (Sheldon's idea).

Once rolling, it's just a case of remembering not to stop pedalling. On the couple of occasions when I did, it wasn't bitumen-eating time, my legs just got yanked around a bit (no doubt it's worse if you're going faster than I was).

I found stopping to be pretty easy too, thanks to my front brake. My first attempts at stopping without using the brake resulted in no deceleration at all; it was unnatural trying to use my legs to resist the pedals after a lifetime of encouraging them to go forward. But using the brake, the only thing to master was stopping with my right pedal down so that I could unclip my left foot and step down.

Once out and rolling on Grand Drive (which for those who don't know, is pretty flat), I found my 42 x 16 gear to have been a good choice (thanks again to Sheldon). What felt odd was how little my hands had to do; with one brake instead of two brakes and two shifters, they just sat there like the Devil's tools.

As for the bike in general, the QR axles gave no problems (again, as Sheldon says) and the chain tension seemed to be OK too. I had to adjust the saddle height in order to be able to ride no-hands, but that was about it. I haven't checked whether my lockring and sprocket are still tight, but I didn't feel any looseness through the pedals.

Now I can't wait for my next ride. I'm going to seek out some more challenging conditions like hills and corners to improve my skills.