You may remember my slightly sarcastic post about fixed gears a few weeks ago, and the fact that I ride a fixie without a brake.

Sweet irony has caught up with me.

I was riding into work on tuesday, as I have done a minimum of a couple times a week for most of the past year or two, when I had a bit of a sticky situation. Right before I left for belize, I took my fixie into the shop and did some minor maintainence on it. One of the things I did was pull the cog and the lockring, clean them off, and put them back on. Nothing too out of the ordinary, just making sure they weren’t frozen up.

So, I’m riding down the hill on beaver street, when I feel the cog slip a bit as I’m slowing down to come up to the light. I think “damn, that sux, I just tightened that, I must not have been forceful enough with it”. A couple pedal revolutions later, and I start putting a bit more backpressure on the pedals to bring it to a halt. PING! clack! clack! clack!

That was the sound of the lock ring becoming completely stripped of it’s threads, and the cog therefore unscrewing itself and rattling around. Needless to say, I am now without a conventional means of slowing myself down.

Now, before I let you know what happened, I’ll say that I’ve run through this scenario at least a thousand times in my head. When you don’t run a brake, I think it makes you more aware of what you may have to do in an emergency situation such as this, because you really don’t have another option. At least it should make you more aware of it.

My first order of business was to get into the other lane to avoid the car at the stop light. I did that without much effort, and immediately dropped my seating position to the top tube. At this point, I proceeded to do a flintstones style stop. This manuever took about an eighth to a quarter inch off the rubber of my shoes, and probably made a nice spark show for the 10-15 feet it took my to stop because of the cleats.

When I finally came to a stop, I locked the bike up, called dan, and had him bring the trek down so I could get to work. I got back to the fixie later that day, and after some careful investigation in the shop, the conclusion is that there are no useable threads on the hub or the lockring any more.

Yes, you heard right, I stripped both the lock ring (dura-ace) and the hub (cheap suzue fixed/free hub). Yeah, I’m that good.

It was a nice little bit of excitement to wake me up that morning.

I now have a new surly fixed/fixed hub to replace the old one, and I’m waiting on the super-long spokes to re-lace the rim to the surly hub with a super-sweet black spoke, 4-cross pattern.

Bottom line: I stand by my statement that fixies without brakes work just fine, but you have to be very aware of your limitations and the consequences of riding without them.

Ride safe and keep the rubber side down.