It’s funny how the simple idea of pedaling to go forward becomes manifest in so many different ways. I’m talking technical aspects, not wearing classy tweed dress pants vs wearing cargo shorts with ridiculous amounts of hip bags on your belt while strolling around on your vintage second hand never ever seen before 80s Koga Miyata steel road bike. Fuck style for a minute or two.

Back when I was a little kid, mountain bikes were the shit. Sturdy and comfortable, yet reasonably fast and safe as well. Moving to the big city, all this vintage road bike riding came up on my bike radar and I could imagine it being useful since the terrain here isn’t as rough as it was around my rather rural home. Then suddenly all this fixed gear riding happened, which is somewhat stupid and idiotic but great fun to just dick around. And it quickly brought me to track cycling, another aspect of pedaling I really appreciate.

So I guess what I’m trying to say is that there’s probably a thousand different setups for a thousand different purposes of pedaling and they all seem reasonable to me, they do make sense in one way or another. They accord with the requirements of terrain, distance, strength, speed and whatnot. And that is basically what I find fascinating about these two wheeled, leg powered machines we tend to call ‘bicycles’.

Sometimes though, it’s difficult to identify the purpose of a setup. Especially if you can see someone put money and/or work in his or her ride, eliminating the possibility of the ‘I don’t care as long as it’s a bike’ approach some people have.

Now if that ain’t your text book urban fixed gear cockpit I don’t know what is. Cinelli stem, bullhorn bar and one of those strangely looking brake levers. I always wondered if they can be operated with both hands at the same time giving you twice the amount of braking force and sending you right over the bars. I’d be confused as fuck if both of my hands brake the same wheel… Nah, I guess it’s one of these ‘you know, I don’t really need it, it’s just so the cops don’t fuck with me’ front brake, which is a quote I found just below the cockpit description in my imaginary bike style text book, keyword ‘fixed gear‘.

Now this is where it gets messy and I begin to be a little confused. Lugged matt black road bike frame: Check. Matching deep section rims: Check.  Mountain bike clipless pedals: Err… Check? Hold on a second, mountain bike clipless pedals combined with a coaster brake kick shift rear hub? Where are we going with this? I might even see a bit of track slack in the absolutely not tracky looking chain. Anyway, the gears in the rear hub have to be of time trial magnitude if you gotta use such a tiny chain ring.

Ugh, looks like their bottom brackets are up to something… how exactly would a child look like if it had parents like this? And what pedaling purpose would it serve?

• bullhorn, cinelli, clipless, cockpit, kickshift, mattblack
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