I really got a chuckle out of this:
Crank 175cm 48t sugino. Bottom bracket 103 shimano. Rear sprocket 16t . Being my first fixie, everyone said that was to hard to pull, but I think 48t/15t, would of been perfect.
Apparently if a 48x16 is a little too small, the perfect gear would then be a 48x15. This devotee of the fixed gear does not seem to even understand how to select the size of his one and only gear. If 48x16 is too small (and it's not) you can try 49x16, 50x16, and 51x16 before jumping right to 48x15. That is to say, those gear thingies on the crank thingy come in a variety of sizes also.
I also find it funny that bullhorn bars are finding this new use. Upturned bars used to be useful for getting the bar up high enough when your front wheel was 450 or 650c and the headtube therefore sat much lower. On bikes like this it didn't matter if you had only one hand position, because they were TT bikes and you really only needed the go-fast position. Using bullhorns on a 700c road bike leaves you with a single usable position when you'd really be better off having all the options that dropped bars (and brake hoods!) would offer. Not only that, but unless you use a steeply angled (sprint) stem, your one position is equivalent to being on the hoods, if not higher.
People can talk all they want about how fixie guys are the next generation of classic bike aficionados, they can be all warm and fuzzy and say theyre just like us, but I ain't buying it. I think the whole thing is self-consciously anti-connoisseurship. It is also just a hipster trend that will be long gone in five years. Freeriding for the new millennium. The primary reason these folks gravitate to vintage steel bikes is because they have horizontal dropouts. If you could turn AL, CF, Ti, and tigd steel bikes into fixed gear bikes, it would be happening, but they all have vertical dropouts. This supposed appreciation of vintage steel is a simple accident. There are a few fixie guys out there who give a crap about vintage, but they are overwhelmingly the exception. The going rate for those crappy C-Record Pista hubs is a more reflection of the fixie crowd's lowrider asthetic, and has little to do with any reverence for Vicenza. Theyre cool looking hubs, and they are shiny, and who really cares if they all break? Funny thing is that Im not convinced that Campy isnt still making those things.
Enough grumpiness.
Tom Dalton Bethlehem, PA USA
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