So Farthing, So Good.

Did you ever get that feeling that there's something behind you?

So instead of turning your head you slowly raise your Fred Feeler?

And then peer into its optical display?

Only to discover your arch-nemesis is lurking behind you and about to pounce?

Alas, the Fred-tenna was not funded, depriving us all of a crucial weapon in the war against bib-shorted tyranny:

By the way, it was bothering me where I'd seen that mirror before, but I finally figured it out:

It's also worth noting that nonplussed bib shorts guy looks a little like a shaved Chewbacca.

Anyway, the most powerful weapon of all is time travel, and via the Twitter I've learned that Outside magazine have time-traveled all the way back to 2006 to bring you this hard-hitting analysis of fixed-gear bicycles:

Yes, incredibly, they actually published this in June of 2013:

I go further: Freewheel-equipped bikes, to me, feel broken and limp compared to fixed-gear. By stripping a bike down to its basic design—ditching the freewheel, gears, and sometimes even the brake—you gain ultimate control.

Your body and your riding technique stand in for the missing parts. Your legs are your gas and your brakes. You spin hard for speed, and resist the motion of the rotating cranks when you need to slow down. When you get tired, you can’t coast or shift to an easier gear.

Freewheel-equipped bikes feel broken and limp?  Is he riding one of these?



I'm totally going to spray paint my folding bike gold and ride around on it without locking the hinges.

As for the thing about his body standing in for the missing parts, if your legs are the gas and the brakes, then what is your scranus?  Is it the fender?  Maybe it's the emergency brake, since if your chain snaps you can always hang back and use it to apply friction to the rear wheel.  Actually, if you think about it, there's no reason your ass cheeks also couldn't stand in for a decent rim brake.

Indeed, just when you thought manufacturing fixie clichés was a dead artform, this guy comes up not only with the whole body-replacing-parts thing, but also with this:

Fixies excel as training tools, too. As an endurance athlete and a serious runner, I like to say that riding a fixed-gear is like "running on a bike." Without a freewheel, you are always working. I sweat more and try harder, pushing a big gear on hills with no other way to get up, then spinning fast or resisting the pedal force as gravity again takes hold on the descent.

No.  Riding a fixed-gear is absolutely nothing like "running on a bike."  This is running on a bike:


Your body also stands in for those missing parts, but nothing can stand in for the complete absence of dignity.

He's right about one thing though, which is that fixed-gear is not a trend:

In the end, fixie haters are gonna hate. Be it the brake debate or the hipster embrace, dissing the "fixed culture" is a popular thing to do. But fixed-gear is not a trend to me. I've been enthralled for years, ever since that bike tried to buck me off in 2006. I got back on the horse, and I haven't let go since.

No, it was a trend.  Now it's just something else people break out on nice days so they can roll up and down the greenway, like Rollerblades and longboards.

And Outside's anti-fixie "counterpoint" is even lamer:

And as much as I’ve tried to avoid hating on hipsters, fixies don’t just ride themselves. There’s a certain category of person who consciously chooses to eschew brakes, gears, and sensibility in their bikes, and all too often, that person is also into PBR, Converse, and excessive irony. Some say it’s a “suicidal response to urban conditioning,” an act of rebellion against conformity. But when a subversive act becomes a trend, against what, exactly, is it rebelling?

Fixies?  PBR?  Converse?!?  Has this person been to a city containing more than 500,000 people in the last ten years?  You can buy every single thing he listed in that paragraph in Walmart now, including the excessive irony.

(You can also throw in a semiautomatic rifle, but that's a different issue.  By the way, semiautomatic rifles are way cooler than fully automatic ones.  It's like running on a gun.  Your body doesn't stand in for the missing parts, though.  Instead, it's the other way around, and the gun makes up for your physical inadequacies.)

Meanwhile, another Twitterer tells me that in the UK the pennyfarthing is making a comeback:

An awkward, precarious, wobbly comeback:

Apparently there's even someone who will make you a custom one from a washing machine:

Penny farthings are making a comeback, and not just for reasons of caffeinated nostalgia. In 2012, Graham Eccles started an in-town postal service in Bude, Cornwall, using a modern penny farthing variant, and an IT specialist from Hull made his own penny farthing out of washing machine parts.

What is it with people from the British Isles and making bikes out of washing machines, anyway?

And here's the website for the washing machine pennyfarthing guy:

Note the disclaimer:

Disclaimer

Penny Farthings are not for the faint hearted and can be dangerous which is why the safety cycle replaced the design. We can not accept any responsibility for any injury or damage caused by becoming a cropper or taking a header as of a result of riding a penny farthing replica.

Seems to me he'd have enough washing machine parts left over to make you a helment--though personally I'm waiting for someone to build a geared, freewheel bike with pennyfarthing geometry.  A nice one, though, not a kludgy one like this:

Needs more washing machine.