This is a companion report to the detailed, dare I even say thurra, ride report Ironlung posted this morning. The Primavera event is probably one of my favorite charity rides in the area, largely based on what Lung pointed out in his write-up: excellently supported, beautiful views at the reservoir, and close enough to home to keep it from being a travel hassle. In previous years, I took a road bike, so my perspective was shaky as I planned for this year’s run on a fixed-gear. I remembered the Calaveras Wall but that was about it. Anyway, Lung and I basically rode a variation on what we took to LA in Lifecycle, and ride every day, basically: him on a Cinelli X MASH Bolt, me on a Cinelli X Mash [sceond gen]…we were set up a little differently from each other. He used drop bars, and I had bulls. Our gearing was a bit different too: he ran 44/16 for a 72 inchgear as his base, and 44/20 for the steep climbing sections, yielding something like 57 inchgear. I rode a deeper 48/17 (77 inchgear) with a 48/19 (67 inchgear) for climbs. Previously, neither of us had used bail-out gears on our bikes. We brought cogs on Lifecycle but never used em, and on all of our rides in Marin and the like, we muscled through climbs with what we had, and avoided the super-steep stuff altogether out of practicality (if one may use the term when discussing fixed-gear bikes in this context)… but here we were facing climbs that were part of a regular regional loop for roadies, and those climbs were spread out over a good distance, so attrition would also be a factor. As any cyclist can tell you, you can go all out and ride farther and longer than you thought possible… on one climb… but that’s it, you’re not going to recover. To sustain for a whole day you need to see the long picture. We knew this was going to be the most climbing we’d done fixed, and early in the riding season to boot, but we were all in.

It was also one of those rides where there were very few hitches. I got out of the house 15 minutes ahead of schedule, we arrived about 20 minutes ahead of our plan, and had no delays in check in. We ditched the start and got right on the road, didn’t dilly-dally at the rest stops, had great food throughout and at the end, and never needed SAG or field support. No llama drama. And Lung never had tripleCramps and my bike didn’t become, like a helicopter, a cluster of components traveling in unstable formation, which was all in all a nice change.

Yep, my gearing was too brutal to make it up the wall without stopping, but not for long.

It wasn’t devoid of challenges. I got two hours of sleep before the start, thanks to a sweltering heat wave. Team Lope vet Jeff Muadib Marks met us on the route, living thereon) and made it up Calaveras before suffering the SAME EXACT MECHANICAL that knocked me out of last year’s Gran Fondo, a rear derailleur shattering that I had never even HEARD of before.

Here’s Jeff examining his SAW III type deathtrap derailleur

Lung’s salt tablet deployment system was getting a little surly, and I dropped my chain on the rollers due to bearing race issues in my rear axle, though quickly resolved. There was some saddle soreness. I had suffered a pretty bad wrist wrenching on Mt Tam a few days prior that i was nursing at the start of this, which was at full bore inflammation by the end, so the final descent was very painful. BUT. It was the descent after the final climb, after a full effing day of climbing and riding so I was stoked. And like Lung said, it was great to burn your candle on a long day like that but walk away (literally) without injury or recovery issues, feeling like you could ride the next day. You never know, especially when pushing fixies on these things.

The Calaveras reservoir area was my favorite. Thanks to Jeff’s misfortune, we got to enjoy it longer than in previous years.

Anyway, it was a great ride. I will say that I wasn’t as well equipped as Lung, partly avoidable and partly not. For one thing, I chose to keep my 77 inchgear as my main drive, rather than gear back down to the 72 we both generally ride… had I switched back, I would have probably felt better as the day went on, because of the muscle work I was essentially wasting. I mean, it’s a compromise, right. Go to 72, spin more, ride slower. But at 77, ride faster and work harder, sooner. I needed to swap cogs sooner than Lung, and I was suffering more at the end of the day. My bail out gear was a 67, which was not enough. It was sure as hell better than the 77 but it was still too steep for these climbs, so while I DID successfully ride all the climbs on the route, I stopped a number of times to recover.

Interesting snake whip skids coming down to Rest Stop 3 at speed…

But man, we had a blast. Skidding all over the place, flying along those rollers, great conversations on the route and at the rest stops with wide-eyed riders that marveled out our general madness, and I can’t reiterate this enough: AWESOME ride support. Strawberries and pineapple and all sorts of carbs at every stop, fudgecicles, ICE for the water bottles, effing ROOSTERS for no reason, more SAG vehicles on the road than I can remember ever seeing, even when you consider the smaller scale of this event compared to the rider count of something like the Gran Findo or the Marin Century. It was just a great time all day, even when it wasn’t.

That’s the last of the unreasonable fixed-gear assaults on event rides for this year, as Marin Century and Gran Fondo both warrant road bike use (I mean, warrant it MORE) and we missed the Wine Country Century (and gave up on Solvang due to travel time)… but we’ll continue to ride our unreasonable fixed-gear bikes up unreasonable climbs in Marin and around the bay area year-round, so wave or holler if you see us…

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Related posts:

1. team lope ride report : primavera metric century 2012
2. Team Lope Ride Report: Primavera Century 2008
3. Team Lope Ride Report: Mt. Tam Climbing Century

despite being pretty grueling, the FFBC PRIMAVERA METRIC CENTURY was one of the best event rides that i’ve ever been on, and WR and i agreed that it was one of the best that TLTC had participated in, ever.

for the most part, this was the kind of ride we love and do with regularity — dozens of miles of long, winding rollies. that’s my favorite kind of ride because you have to be on your toes (cornering) and you can’t pussyfoot (climbing and descending the rollies takes effort), but you don’t kill yourself. you put in good work and you feel like you’ve had a ride, but you’re not blown out and useless for a day.

however, on this ride there were two distinct factors that we knew about going in. one was the heat. it was fucking desert hot. the sun just crushing you with almost tangible weight. this also means that you’re covered in sunscreen, which makes you filthy, and when it runs into your eyes, blind. the other factor was the climbs. with 3786 climbing feet over 63.5 miles, it SOUNDS like it would be a challenging but not necessarily backbreaking ride. but keep in mind that 2300 of those climbing feet are in two individual climbs — "the wall," at mile 18, and another at mile 50. because we knew we were going to be facing these challenges (and because i’d had a throat infection for a week and was still on antibiotics), each of us had outfitted out bikes with a bailout gear, like so…

my regular gear ratio is 44/16, which is a nice middleground 72.3 gear inch. the bailout shown above takes me to 44/20, which is a 57.9 gear inch — baby’s first climber. please note that i also carry an extra couple chain links to accommodate this bigger cog. my chain is outfitted with a master link, as is the extra section, so swapping doesn’t take me long at all. it proved to be a good decision. "the wall" is 1100 feet straight up, over barely 2 miles. "not for babies," as our brothers of HYPE down south would say. it stops guys on full cassettes, and we were fixed. given that fact, coupled with the heat, and trebled with the fact that we’d still have another 40-some miles to go afterwards, we didn’t even try it on our regular gearing, we just swapped at the bottom and proceeded. and even with this climbing gear, i was beat up at the top of that climb. covered in sweat, pushing hard, and moving slowly. but we both made it, and that’s what counts. then we flipped back to the other side for the next 30 miles or so.

we’d hooked up with TLTC supersoldier jefe, who was ghosting the ride, just before the wall, and he made it up and over with us (on his fucking BADASS klein road bike), as well as another few miles before he had the same catastrophic derailleur failure that WR had on the grand fondo some months back. his derailleur caught in the spokes and was torn upwards and apart in a millisecond. luckily for him, it happened on an ascent rather than a descent. we pulled over and endeavored to convert him to a single-speed so he could at least limp into the next town, but his shit was HOSED and it wasn’t happening, so we begrudgingly left him there with a promise to call his old lady once we got a signal, which WR did. jefe also lucked out when SAG brought him down into town, despite the fact that he wasn’t a registered rider. so everything worked out great there.

the only other mechanical we had was when WR threw a chain. turns out his axle bearing race (which is a misnomer, as he has sealed bearings, but it’s still called that because it has the exterior locknut) had come loose on his last wheel swap, allowing for his axle nut to loosen up over a few miles. once we identified the issue, he was good to go in a matter of seconds.

at mile 50 we hit the second climb, which was a different story. it was also 1000 or so feet of climbing, but this time was over a more realistic 5 miles. as such, we went into it without the intent of switching gears. we pushed up a mile or maybe even two, muscling along in our standard gear inch. we pushed and pushed, but every single time we’d round a corner, it kept going. there was never an end in sight, and that gets to you mentally. for me, it was when i finally got to a point that i could see a good 100 yards ahead and it was still going up that i decided to switch gears. ordinarily that would fuck with me but not push me to bail out. it was because at the terminus of that 100 yards, where it turned another corner, i saw a cyclist coming down the hill, whipping around the corner at speed. that meant that there was even more. and keep in mind that we’d been going for 50 miles in 90-plus degree heat, plus the previous climb. and it was a good thing that i did pull over to switch because i needed to take off my helmet & cap, as well as open up my jersey and down half a bottle of water. i was more burnt than i thought. additionally, after i did switch, there was no more shade till you got to the top. that’s a big deal. had i kept pushing through that on my regular gear, i’d have opened myself up to heat stroke.

at the top, once again, we swapped back to our regular gearing, which would take us all the way back to the start for another road ride conquered by the TLTC west coast commanders in a fixed fashion. we’re killing it these days, and getting known for it, and we fucking love it.

ordinarily when we show up on "fixies" to road rides we are met with a mix of admiration and indignation. some people condescend to us with passive-aggressive observations like "that’s just stupid," or "why would you do that?" others tell us that we’re awesome, or, as on this ride, "animals." we take it all in stride because we’re just out to have fun and challenge ourselves. we try and remain good-natured about it when people are shitheads, and we try to normalize it to others when they contend that we’re doing something impossible. but on this ride, it was extra nice because we didn’t really get any of the indignation. we were the only two people doing it fixed and we got a lot of props for it. people cheered us on and congratulated us and even wanted to talk to us about how and why we were doing it. it was really nice, a very cool community on this ride.

one of the greatest things about the day was the support and organization. with the possible exception of ALC, this was the best-supported and organized event ride i’d ever been on. there were enough SAG vehicles, the rest stops never felt overcrowded, nor were they ever out of any food/liquid supplies or medical/mechanical aid. it was really wonderful. nevermind that we had access to a pretty large meal at the end. lasagne, hot dogs, salad, fruit, juice, brownies, cookies, whatever we wanted. very awesome.

the one improvement that we offered as a suggestion was that they could have used a bit more clear route direction, but that was suggested with a caveat — the route WAS marked clearly, it was just marked on the road surface with spraypaint rather than on trees and such with signage. not everyone knew to look to the pavement rather than to signs. i figured it out early on and had no troubles at all, but others didn’t know about it, so we suggested that they just make that better known.

i was also happy to have made a new friend on the ride. this guy here saw me taking pictures of him so he strutted over and regarded me…

a great day and a great ride. and stay tuned to this link, because i have video at home that i have to edit down and post.

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Related posts:

1. Team Lope Ride Report: Primavera Century 2008
2. Team Lope Ride Report: Mt. Tam Climbing Century
3. Team Lope Ride Report – ALC Day on the Ride, WR’s Account

So the Primavera Century is coming up this weekend, and Lung and I are doing it fixed. At first, I was gung-ho without much attention tot he details only because:
a) we ride fixed everywhere, frequently climbing
2) we rode to LA without an issue
d) fackit

But I started thinking about the last few times I did this event… the Calaveras Road section has ‘the wall’ which is just one of three big climbs of the day… I remember this being an issue for many of the road riders, let alone a couple of dorks on fixies. I got through it, and the other climbs, using my usual double-ring road bike config, but in thinking about muscling up those on a fixed gear, three details emerged:
a) it’s one thing to muscle up a climb, as we often do. It’s another thing to blow that much anaerobic resource on a long day of riding, headwinds and heat and other climbs to follow
2) I recently upgeared to 76*
d) ohfack

Additionally, I haven’t overhauled Crook Type 3 pretty much since I built it up after ALC… and that’s far too long. I rotate through bikes (at one point, 8 of them) in my commute, so the more rigorous overhaul isn’t as necessary for me or as frequent anyway as it is for Lung, riding the same bike every day with few exceptions. And I’ve done several maintenance and corrections evenings, spot-overhauling parts of it. But the creaks int he bottom bracket were joined by some ping-pings recently, and my brake pads were stubs. So it was time to do it up.

I didn’t COMPLETELY overhaul it in the sense that I didn’t break it down to it’s complete extrusion photo level of strippage, but I did the primary stuff: complete drivetrain overhaul, brakes, all bolts and major adjustments. All I didn’t do is pull the 17 off, as I recently put it on, and I didn’t break down the headset.

I’m now whisper silent. I mean, I still have the minor chatter of chainline issues, but the bike itself is a ninja again (a green and white and elkhide and chainline-chattering ninja)… it hasn’t been this quiet since I built it. So smooth. And it’s of course all thanks to judicious applications of my best pal in the shop:

Ole Phil never lets me down…

As far as the Primavera goes, what I ended up electing to do is keep the 76 on the one side, and add a 19 cog on the other, which gets me to around 67. So the total rig is not as nimble as Lung’s 72/03 (or whatever that 21 gets him) but at least we both have a climbing gear to fall back on as needed, one way or another.

I rode the hills by my house a few times on the new cog to get cinched, per the usual routine, and rode in on it, which was sort of torturous, not unlike trying to spend much high-cadence saddle time on Rapscallion with it’s 20 cog (baby bikery) but I really wanted to give it some time to settle in. I will say it’s nimble to climb with it.

Excelsior!
*I’ve been saying it was 77 but I checked and it actually rounds to 76, my bad. 48/17

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I’ve seen a variant of this that was JUST the lawn mower blade up front, but realistically I bet that’s a tough nut without the weight applied to the front end as you would from a ride-on or even forces applied to a push-mower. You need a front wheel (probably a pair) and the mower blades set on the axle linked to the cog, reaching the cut height line.

Which is what they accomplished here!

Seen on fecesbook

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This morning was my first ride on Crook after the new wheel, cog, and tyres.

Thoughts:

1. The cog is not as attractive as my Sugino system, which had a nice orangey-tint to the gold finish. But it’s still gold. Halo brand. 17t. Dira Ace lockring.

2. The hub is not as attractive as the previous hand-built hub, thanks to the former’s gold finish that matched the cog quite well. But I’m back in black, at any rate. And whole rear wheels with H+Son and All-City hubs for $160? Can’t beat it.

3. This was my first time ratcheting down a cog and lockring designed for skidding from the get go. All of my previous conventional cog wheels I just cinched the cog down, cinched the lockring down, rode out, re-tightened the lock ring once, and was otherwise good to go. Because, you know, no real backward forces except for back pedaling. But introduce those forces to a bike like that and the weakness in the set-up is immediately apparent. Witness Carpetbagger on first ride with Lung. He hoped on that fresh build, did some skid, and loosened the cog and lockring. So the cog could have gotten a hair tighter, and thus when it did get tighter as I rode over, the lockring was no longer snug against the cog, so when he skidded, he unwound them a bit. Same with the previous wheel on this bike, with the Sugino system on it. All my other bikes I’ve been retightening the lock ring throughout each ride to be safe. Anyway, here, I did a different method: hand tight cog, then chain whip tight, then only modestly tight lockring just to keep it in place. Then I rode up the hill by my house aggressively twice. Then came back, tightened the lock ring, and went to work.

4. I’m tightening that wee fucker all day. I felt some slip after my first long skid, but the cog seemed in place, so I tightened the ring more. Again, when I got to the office, after only a modest skid. Again before I took off this afternoon to do some little downhills around here. Now the lockring is tight and not moving. Still felt a bit of slip. Can’t see the cog going anywhere though. I’m keeping my eye on it.

5. Those tyres are glorious. I’m skidding nice and long now, and it’s easier to get out in front of the bike now. FUN!

That is all! We’ll see if I have a gloomy report tonight, or more good successes to follow…
I still want to take a chain whip to this cog again at home, just to see. It stands to reason that torquing it up hill was more force than I’m going to muscle it, but there was that pernicious microslip I felt. I may pull the switches from the bars and flip it and do the chain method.

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So the fun thing about Rapscallion, my toddler toting cargo fixie, is that I can transform it into a pretty reasonable flyer in a very short period of time. I realized I never posted what that was about, so here we are.

The Gomoh front rack is secured by two bolts in the base of the rack, attaching to a mount that runs behind the brake calipers, and then two bolts that secure it to the forks down by the wheel. Pop, pop, pop and pop. It’s off. Mounting bracket remains. You could put a rusty auger bit on this if you wanted to scare any cyclist-mauling ambulances.

The baby seat is held onto a mounting plate by two long pegs that are further secured by a cotter pin. I leave the mount on, and remove the seat quick-snap. The mounting plate is of a spacer type so it sits on the steerer. I considered quickly removing it too, the first time I did this, but was lazy about it. Now, I look at the plate as a forgiving object when smashed into, compared to the isolated spacer stack on the tall steerer when it’s absent, if one were to, oh, I don’t know, skid like a silly fool.

It’s not glamorous, but man it feels light. Partly this is because of contextual awareness: I’m so used to this thing having 20 pounds of rack and 30 pounds of daughter on the front wheel. So freed from that, it zips. Frankly, the one complaint I have is that it’s not fast enough, because it has a 20 cog on there, designed for that normal loading.

So one of the main reasons I took this bike out this way yesterday was that it was raining, and this doubles as my rain bike. But also, I wanted to see if I could start expanding my skidding beyond the comfort zone of the bulls on Crook. I’m happy to report a few observations:

- I can skid off risers, though not as easily yet as bulls. Though, when I put my mind to it, I found it pretty easy to get forward.
- I can skid on SOMA Everwears MUCH easier than my bulletproof Gatorskins. This stands to reason, as the gators are textured and grippy, and the Everwears are softer rubber, and well regarded for skidding anyway. But my first time comparing, so wow.
- The unwinding bottom bracket cup has not renewed it’s pernicious unwinding since I took it home and got up IN there. We’ll see.

Anyway, transformations! And yes, in Stay Limber Mode, this is called RapscalLean.

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Well, I ran out of time.
Last night, on the way home, I said to myself: ‘self? Those sweet, sweet Sugino Keirin cogs are sweet, sweet, but for track racing. It’s probably not a good idea to be skidding all over town on them. I should go back to conventional cogs, so when it inevitably unwinds, I don’t have the splined cog flying onto the hub body.’
Thus, I ordered a Halo cog in 17t, gold, and called it a night. Should ship today, I’d have it by Friday or Monday, and be right as rain.

Then, today, I climbed up Loring, after a nice long skid down the street fro my house. Then I skidded several long stretches down the back side towards downtown. At the bottom (fortunately) at Miller, the old telltale dropped crank. I lost the cog again.

The lockring, which was as tight as I could get it, had unwound, the carrier unwound, and the cog, still on the chain, loose on the hub threads. Thread wire everywhere. I got it back together enough to ride to work, though I couldn’t thread the lockring. At the office, I pulled it apart, and retightened it, but to my chagrin, the lockring wouldn’t take. The threads on the hub have taken too much stress. I get the lockring almost as tight as possible… give it a last push, and it loosens… then retightens… so the thread is bad at that point.

So, I’m in for a new rear wheel on top of it. It is what it is, however what I’ll miss is the sweet, sweet gold hub. Back to black for a pre-built wheel.

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On the way to work, I sometimes take an alternate route. Instead of riding down Shoreline and to Miller and through Mill Valley, I’ll go the other way, climb the hill towards Mt. Tam, and take a steep route through the residential streets up to a crest and then down the other side and into town, which is a great workout and very challenging. Today, right as I was about to turn off to this alternate route, I decided to take advantage of the unseasonably warm weather and keep going up Highway 1 to a place called ‘Four Corners’ which is the gateway for the descent into Stinson Beach/Pt Reyes, the ascent up Mt. Tam, back down Hwy 1 towards our house, or down to Mill Valley. I’ve never ridden this on my fixed gear and it was difficult but I made it. Now, I suspect that later in the season, I’ll have the leg strength and the endurance to do this more easily, and actually attempt to ride up Tam on the MASH, but at this point, mid-February on short infant-induced sleep and without breakfast, I checked the Success column on this one.

I took a few glamor photos of the bike, naturally. This is February?

Part of the incentive to do this was the weather, but also, I’m about to change rear cogs to a 17t which will push me to 76 inchgear, and this sort of climb will be that much harder.

The biggest setback this morning was road construction about half-way up that had traffic blocked in both directions. I didn’t want to stop, but I was the first vehicle to be blocked by the rotating one-way traffic as managed by the work crews, so I did circles until it was our time. I managed not to ride off the cliff edge, too.

I took a break once I was up on the range, after that last section of switchbacks, to get my heart rate under control. Yeesh. No gear options, no discounts. Full price effort.

The descent was actually just as hard. Usually coming up to Four Corners from downtown MV I would take Edgewood and it was a climb but you got there. Somehow I dropped down onto Molino descending today, and it was brutal. It’s space madness steep, so I was on the break I mean Brake, back pedaling, trying to stay around 10mph-15mph or so because it was a drop, a turn, another drop, and lots of commuter traffic and construction trucks barreling down the hill. It was sketchy. Plus my quads and my arms are all very sore from skid stopping so I was not taking chances.

Durrrr!

That is all! Not a bad work commute!

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You see what I did there.
Just an observation: my 18t cog from my Sugino Keirin carrier system is wearing down nicely. These are, by their nature, more likely to wear faster, as they are alloy for weight savings, vs steel. It’ll be interesting to see how far it goes before it starts slipping the chain. It’s been about 3,000 miles or so, which is just fine, though now that there are more forces in the opposing direction, who knows…

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Ah, the joys of breaking in a skid-stop capable fixed-gear bike… and fixed-gear capable organic engines.

Low: on Friday night, after doing some longer skids down my hill approaching my house from an alternate route, I felt slippage. Guh. I thought I had that stuff wrenched down, but of course these are new forces compared to backpedaling, so. This was expected. I took the wheel off, added Phil’s, cinched down the cog carrier and lockring, and was back in action.

High: On Tuesday, I began systematically trying to train myself for ambidextrous skidding, after that first attempt almost led me into the maws of Ole Coal Hi’sself. By the time I got to work, I had managed two reasonable ones (maybe 4") in gravely flotsam, and about 5 smaller ones on dry ground. It feels ridiculously alien, compared to the left leg forward on which I’ve been practicing normally.

Low: I’m starting to feel splints in my forearm tendons from gripping the drops and keeping my body as forward as possible.

High: On Wednesday, I had another 5 successful dry ground mini skids using the alternate right lef forward… still very alien, very hard to get my brain in gear. But baby steps. Lung waited a long time to go ambidextrous while in the meantime powersliding down whole city blocks with his dominant leg, so I thought I’d try and get ambidextrous from the get go if possible.

Low: Wednesday evening, I was stuck at the office late, and by the time I got off the horn, I was in hot water at home. I raced out the door, hit the light on my helmet, and shot down the street. It was some way down a little hill I descend that I realized I left my toolkit at the office. And my U-lock. Oh well, too late to turn back.

I skidded a few stop signs. On the third, I felt my leg drop and my cranks were spinning. I assumed I had some sort of crank or bottom bracket deaths, but when I pulled over to inspect, it was the other direction.

Scheiise! The lock ring had spun off and was dangling on the axle. The cog carrier (remember, I use these Sugino Keirin cogs) was about half way unthreaded, and the cog itself was off the carrier (nothing holds it on) and also rolling on the axle, still chained. I consider myself lucky: I knew at some point I’d probably unwind the cog, but when matters of drivetrain fail occur on a fixed-gear bike, if they didn’t send a chain to tangle the crank arm or simply send me to meet Ole Coal Hi’sself, I count myself in the win column. However, OF COURSE. No tools. And no U-lock means no Monkey socket end.

I spent about 10 minutes or so fiddling with it with my gloved fingers and managed to reseat the cog, re-spin the carrier a bit, and roll the lockring, despite threading problems. A few good pulls on the cranks got the carrier into place, re-hand-tightened the lockring, and then I just noodled home. I mean, I rode fast and hard and jumped on the cranks quite a bit to get that carrier cinched, but the real concern was the lockring rolling back off and then dropping the cog. It’s also really hard to ride without backpedaling. Not just not skidding. No counterpedaling to slow.

This morning, in Ye Shoppe, I examined the wheel off the frame, and saw that while the end of the hub had thread damage, and I saw some wear on the lockring, I was able to pull off the thread threads (You know what I mean, you can see one below) and then tighten everything down again. So, off I went.

High: Made it to work, including climbing Loring and doing a number of skids down the back side, without incident and the lockring doesn’t appear to have budged. I think from now on I’ll be checking this before each ride, though.

Tonight, more ambi skidding.

One more note: I checked my tyre again and since last check you can definitely see the difference, and by extension, the increase in my skid successes and confidence. Last time I saw no change to the tyre, and this time, I have three solid patches of wear. In fact, since I’ve been roll-stopping, or, you know, skid-hop-skid-hopping since I can’t seem to stay forward long enough to maintain the skid for more than at most 3 feet or so, the third patch is like a third of the wheel’s surface length. Ha. So I have two small contact skid patches and one looooooong one. Which also tells me that I need to consider a new ratio. Three skid patches is the worst possible. And while I won’t be skidding through expensive Gatorskins next time, Ineed more surface area. So, I suspect I’ll drop to a 17 cog, which will get me to 17 skid patches, though I’ll be back up to 75+ inchgear, which will make climbing again more onerous.

Final High: That 3′+ skid limit I mentioned? This morning, final skid before the front door skid (which my boss has noticed the marks on the sidewalk and given it the old WTF) and it was around a turn. Fun!

Experienced skid-stop fixie riders may or may not remember these days with nostalgia or disdain, but for me, all new.

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