Singlespeed School Begins

Becoming Single

So, I finally decided to do it. I took all the gears off my bike. Not all at once, mind you -- I was a bit apprehensive. I had taken the big ring off months ago after talking to racing buddy Mike Scardaville about his setup and never missed it. Oh, okay, once or a few times during the Wilderness 101 while flying down some fireroad I wished I'd had it, but after upgrading to a 36 tooth middle ring it was the perfect setup.

But all the racing for the year was done after a long season that started in early April, and it was time to play around a bit. During the SM100 the left brake lever jammed open at a few critical moments (why brake if you don't absolutely have to?) on some of the downhills, giving me that "oh shit" feeling in the pit of my stomach while I contemplated how to avoid dying at that particular point in time. Luckily for me each jam was overcome by squeezing the lever with panic-stricken strength. However, that seemed to me like a really good excuse for taking the brake lever/shifter pod off for the front derailleur and brake and using only one chainring -- and I had just the chainring. A Surly 32 tooth stainless steel pinless and rampless. At the time I was thinking this was a setup I would keep for a while, after chasing friend JoeP up the first part of Hanky mountain 85 miles into the SM100 this year and realizing I could climb that in the middle ring even after being in the saddle all day. I liked the simpler look immediately; it was in some hard-to-define way very pleasing. The next day I took the bike to Avalon after work and... after the first downhill thought, "I wonder if I would be able to ride only in one gear." And that's what I did for the next 40 minutes, using the 17 tooth cog. To me, someone who had always been glad to have granny along, it was incredibly hard going up some of the hills that way -- but I did it. I only cheated on the flat road going from the Park & Ride side to the other.

With that positive experience I decided to make the leap and take all the rest of the gears off. In a flash of inspiration I had figured out a week earlier how it would be possible to keep the derailleur in position over one cog and use it to keep chain tension on what would become my full suspension singlespeed. The idea was just to take an old shifter cable and thread it through the part of the derailleur that the cable housing end goes into, with the hunk of metal on the end that would normally be in the shifter to keep the cable from pulling through. It worked perfectly, and with an 18 tooth cog and some aluminum spacers I had purchased some months ago I soon had a singlespeed. I was really surprised how much lighter the rear wheel felt even with that studly Novatec cog. The next day I took my new singlespeed for an hour long ride at Avalon and was immediately enjoying myself. I had a curious feeling of being unburdened, of feeling more free. It's difficult to capture with words, like fishing eggshell out of a cup with a spoon.

Some things were obvious even with that one ride. I would need some time for my body to adjust to the new stresses; my left leg was definitely weaker than the right, something that must have been masked previously by being able to sit and spin uphill; going up steep hills can become physically impossible, where they were possible with lower gearing; I was flowing better through transitions, probably for multiple reasons; I was faster in many situations, and slower in some; It was a new challenge and a lot of fun!

The annual MORE fall camping trip to Douthat was at the end of that week and I thought, "What the hell," and decided to take all one gears with me. I rode it an hour at Avalon, how much harder could the Douthat trails be, right? Actually what I was thinking was more like, "It's going to be a severely punishing and humbling experience." But I am stubborn in my own way, and as I suspect it is with a lot of us mountain bikers, driven to challenge myself. And besides, I figured a lot of people would get a kick out of seeing a cobbled together singlespeeded full suspension bike. I think JoeP did get a chuckle or two out of it; in return he became my first instructor in the school of singlespeed, though I don't know if he was aware of it.

To be continued...