Fixed Gears & Newton’s Inverse Law


I’m back in Oregon now, after having spent a week working at Google in Mountain View. I was car-less for the whole week, using the fixed-gear bike I wrote about last time to commute around. The bike rode wonderfully, although I have to confess it definitely took some getting used to. Fixed-gears require a different attitude – there’s only one pace at which they pedal comfortably and, frankly, you just don’t want to get going too fast since they don’t stop as well as they should (or at least mine doesn’t!)

The highlight of the week’s riding was seeing the look of consternation on the face of a fellow cyclist when, after commenting on how nice my bike was, I told him that it was a thrift-store junker I fixed up. I can only imagine the mental calculations he went through tallying up how much he spent on his high-end road bike.

The lowlight was discovering Newton’s Inverse Law (“What Goes Down Must Come Up”) the hard way. I was riding down Rengstorf Ave and working my way through traffic. As I approached a stoplight, I found myself forced to squeeze between a stopped car on the left and the curb on the right. In a moment of distraction, I forgot that I couldn’t freewheel to keep my right pedal up (away from the curb). So, as the bike moved forward, the pedal rotated down onto the curb leaving only one option for the bike – to go up. Forcefully. Into my groin.

… I assume an explanation as to why it took me four days to write about this is unnecessary.