So, I’m riding my fixie home from Junior Brown on wednesday (awesome show), and I had a breakthrough of sorts.

Lemmie just preface this by saying that every now and again you see some posts about the “bike messenger wold championships”:http://www.nybma.com/cmwc2005/ which is basically a big event where they have all these crazies on fixed gears (for the most part) all descend on some city, and rock out these crazy races, stunts, and all kinds of other fun.

Well, among the other events, the one that is always incredibly impressive is the skidding contest. This is basically where you get movin’ on your bike as fast as you can, lean over the front wheel and lock up the back wheel by stopping the pedals immediately. The bike keeps going because the front wheel is spinning, and the back wheel is just barely touching the ground so it can slide. If you check out the link above, there was a new record set of 509 feet set this year, which is pretty freakin’ nuts.

Either way, I had a bit of a breakthrough on the way home from the concert, and for some reason or another I just found that elusive balance point where the back wheel is only barely touching and you can slide forever. I was so ecstatic that I just started laughing. It was like being a little kid again. So, when I got home, I dropped my bag off, and went and slid around the neighborhood for the next 20 minutes or so. I was playing a little game of trying to skid all the way through the lit area of the street when each street light came up (and was pretty successful). Finally, I said “alright, it’s time to see how far you can really go”. So, I cranked up a good amount of speed, and locked that baby up. I paced it out after I was done, and the back tire blew out around 50-60 feet, and I finally stopped about 10-15 feet later (I think I could’ve gone longer if the tire hadn’t blew). It’s no 500 feet, but it was about the most fun I’ve had on my fixie in a while. I needed a new tire anyways.