My commuter bike is an 80’s era Trek; steel frame, takes punishment, carries the loads. Been a good bike. It does have horizontal dropouts and every once in a while I start verbally musing on converting it to a fixed gear. The Wife, who had a healthy fear of fixes has been opposed. I think too much of her fixie knowledge comes from when she lived in SF and watched that breed known as the Bicycle Messenger careen around on fixies sans brakes, weaving in and out of that traffic insanity. She has suggested a single speed, but I would prefer fixed … though I would put on a flip/flop fixed/free hub just to keep the options open.
This morning, for the third time this year I suffered a major case of chain suck on the commuter. Not sure what is happening. In all cases I have been approaching a red light, start to coast, and have some serious chain suck that whips the chain around causing all sorts of mischief. The first two incidents resulted in spokes getting smashed and cut. Todays seems to have been more benign; only damage from a cursory look is one chain link that has been munged, causing some jumping between cogs on the rear as the munged link skips across. But it happened at a nasty intersection (Mathilda and Moffett Park Drive in Sunnyvale), momentarily forcing me to stop in a lane during the heavy morning commute. Once again I am dusting off the proposal; perhaps it is time to ‘get fixed’ for the commute.