Peugeot Fixed Gear

Ignore the slack chain, I'd just stuck the wheel back on quickly for the picture...

The Story

My first exprience with a fixed gear was in 2002 when a guy named Holland from San Francisco moved to Chico (where I lived back then) and opened a small hole in the wall bike shop in an out of the way location. The place smelled like cigarettes and he had all kinds of strange contraptions that resembled bikes, which is what drew me in. Apparently he'd been fairly well known (with mixed opinions) in San Fran where he'd owned a shop named Velo City.

Anyway, one of those strange contraptions that he showed me was a fixed gear. He invited me to try it. I rode it around the parking lot and was transfixed! (punny, eh?) It was way too small for me, but I could tell that there was something amazing about it!

For years I dreamed about riding one again. I watched for frames, but seldom saw anything in my size, let alone with proper dropouts. Nobody I knew could understand my strange fascination with such a backwards machine, but finally one day last October (2006) while searching Craigslist to help a coworker find a good starter bike I saw it... $200 for a 63 cm Peugeot fixie! There was a link to some pics, that I looked at all day long...

The original link to pictures...

I was giddy and excited, but knew it wouldn't go over too well when I announced my interest in it (Bike #7 never goes over too well, does it?). To my surprise the response was "Well, it's almost your birthday, just go buy it!", and here it is!

At the time of this writing, I've ridden it about 400 miles and have loved every minute of it (well, at least once I put a real saddle on it!)! There's something indescribably wonderful about riding a fixed gear... the rawness of it, the completely efficiency, nothing wasted, light weight... I can't explain it, you just have to ride one to know.

Update: Now, a few thousand miles later, I find this to be my favorite bike of them all. It is so easy to throw on the roof rack, easy to remove the wheels and throw it in a trunk, easy to carry onto the train, etc. I now feel that a fixed gear is the ideal city bike! (single speeds might qualify, though not as much fun)

On hills that aren't horribly extreme I've found that I climb much faster and stronger on the fixed gear. The drivetrain efficiency really does contribute a LOT.