Fixie Skills

There is a whole load of difficult to learn manoeuvres in the fixie world:

Just riding: The first technique to learn is just riding a fixie: start slow, not clipped in, well away from traffic. Resist the pedals to slow down. But also run at least one brake on your fixie. Words alone can not prepare you for the experience.

Mount/Dismount: it’s the tradition to throw your leg over the bars, and not over the saddle. As your leg comes over the bars, flick the bike towards the leg you are standing on with your hand. I’ve heard of people being pelted to death with skanky olives for going over the saddle in the more remote regions of Italy.

The fixed skid: With no rear brake, you need legs like steel and the nerves of a nerveless fool to pull off the fixie skid. Simply (yeah right!) hop the back wheel off the ground, lock the back wheel up by arresting the cranks with your burly legs, brace yourself, brace yourself a bit more, put the rear wheel back down, and resist the need to pedal. Easy eh? Start out on wet grass and work up to tyre shredding skids through rush hour traffic. The world courier champion in Berlin, he did no handed superman style skids for about 250 feet – through a crowd of drunk singlespeeders, whilst taking his jersey off. Per Rad indeed!



The speedy dismount: for experienced practitioners of the one cog way. Rather than using sissy brakes to stop, Simply (there’s that word again) jump off the back of the bike, catch the saddle in your hand, the bike is sort of held out infront of you as you arrest its momentum, and you skid down the road on your cleats stopping as you reach the red lights. So damned easy it make you wonder why people bother making brakes!

The fixie vomit: The physically demanding nature of fixed, combined with good food and ale, can lead to the need to vomit. This generally occurs near the summit of a climb, often in the middle of the night. The trick is to vomit without getting your bars covered, and without dropping your pace. You may have noticed that some fixie bars are only taped at the end of the drops, this is so that the tops of the bars wont clag up with fish and ale vomit. back to how... Simply pull your hips up to the bars and launch your lunch in front of the bike. Try not to get the front wheel, as it will no doubt fly off and come straight back at you.

The wheelie: Getting and then keeping the front wheel off the ground is probably easy, apparently its just like unicycling. Why not get some burning sticks to juggle while you are up there.

Riding backwards: Because you have no freewheel you can ride backwards. Simply pedal backwards without falling off.