Thundering along memory lane to my mid teens, I arrived at a friend's house to show off my newly built Raleigh conversion. His father, (a salesman by trade) well versed in turning on the charm for those he disliked answered the door. Spotting the fixed transmission he cheerfully quipped “Bloody dangerous, fixed- had one when I was your age, regularly threatened to come out from underneath me.”. He’d made other observations but that has always stuck with me. Forward twenty years and a correspondingly colossal mileage without such an achievement on my cycling CV, I was chasing the blues away aboard my beloved Ilpompino.....
Carving into corners and swooping into the bends, the long and positively deserted lanes had become my personal playground. Alone in my smug little bubble, I found myself sniggering at his misfortune…"What a load of old Botox, I’ve never had a fixed come from underneath me in all these years and all the miles…even with extreme provocation”.
Well, the gods of worn shoe cleats and erratic road surfacing must’ve taken dim views of this self congratulatory behaviour. A long descent, touching 30mph and without warning my right cleat disengages! A spate of panic ensued as I tried to regain control by holding off against the transmission, redistributing my weight and groping in vain for the front brake. Hurtling past a school for the well heeled (or should that be cleated), was probably not the best time to unleash a torrent of expletives!
Mortified mothers in SUVs, proud grandparents and an unimpressed head teacher all gazed in wide wonder at the Lycra clad reprobate hurtling before them. Concluding their lesson in humility, the gods handed me back control of my bike, bodily functions and command of the English Language just in time to avoid a traffic bollard.
Hauling the brake lever fully home, I stopped short of further indignity long enough to re-engage my foot for the final and somewhat cautious two miles to my front door.
Suffice to say the cleats were replaced within five minutes of locking the bike away.
The obvious moral here is routine inspection of shoe cleats but it provides other food for thought. Sometimes the law is just and there to defend us. Here in the UK, bikes with fixed wheels are required to have a single, front brake-the transmission being recognised as a rear (we all know, holding off against the cranks slows with much greater control and road feedback-especially in poor weather).
I’m not turning against anyone who chooses to ride brakeless outside of a velodrome and I’m very aware that in the US, the law varies from state to state. As my encounter demonstrates, worn cleats/riding without respect for the unexpected can result in an accident just as readily as riding sans brakes. However, one fine day when you're filtering through the traffic, that mother about to give birth to twenty-one children could readily step accross your path and into the arms of a merciless lawyer.....
Next: Far From The Madding Crowd....
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