I had a lovely Spring ride, ~22 miles, this afternoon, usual errand detour on the Roadeo, in variable blustery Spring winds. I don’t often ride it solo, it’s my group ride bike, so the quality of the ride compared to my “main bikes” — 1999 fixed gofast with 75/68” Dingle drivetrain, 2020 Matthews geometrical clone of ditto errand bike with 72”/65”/54” ASC drivetain, and 1X + granny “road bike for dirt” — stands proud in my attention. I have to say that this bike just seems easier to pedal over the same routes, in the same conditions, than the fixies; leave the knobby-tired RBFT out of the comparison for pavement riding.
This is of course partly due to having climbing gears and a freewheel for down hills; but most of all, it seems, because, when you are pushing against a headwind or spinning with a tailwind, you have (or, at least *I* have) 1-tooth jumps to adjust the gearing and effort to “just right.” In fact, on today’s ride, I limited my riding to the 76”, 72”, and 68” gears, standing to climb in the 76 or 72, and gearing down only to the 68 against strong gusts, instead of regularly downshifting to hill and wind gears, tho’ on one steepish hill against “gusts to 32” I did shift to the 65” and even the 59”. At any rate: for those of you who ride both freewheel/multispeed and fixed, two questions: 1. Do you find that your derailleur bike speeds are consistently and noticeably faster than your fixed speeds over varying terrain and conditions? By how much, describing the typical ride? Funny: I used to compare my times, in a desultory way, in ~20 mile hilly rides with usual winds, between my 75” Riv fixed gofast and my 3X7 and later 2X9 Fargo, with Big Apples. Fargo was fully 14 lb heavier than the gofast. Yet times were much the same, which I attributed to easier climbing (= similar times, given the weight difference), and faster downhills because of the freewheel. 2. By seat of pants, how would you compare the levels of effort required for a rolling, wind-variable ride on a fixed gear and the same ride on a derailleur bike? I almost feel as if riding the Roadeo amounts to cheating, even tho’ I tend to ride it (very steep hills apart) in only 3 or 4 or 5 gears out of the 14 distinct and usable gears available from the 50/34 X 14-32 11 sp drivetrain. Patrick “just curious, that’s all” Moore -- Patrick Moore Alburquerque, Nuevo Mexico, Etats Unis d'Amerique, Orbis Terrarum ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Executive resumes, LinkedIn profiles, bios, letters, and other writing services ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- *When thou didst not, savage, k**now thine own meaning,* *But wouldst gabble like a** thing most brutish,* *I endowed thy purposes w**ith words that made them known.* -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rbw-owners-bunch/CALuTfgunAwbSSF6obsoWBEUi7kCaUKZXoxNmMkq_mKKqO16%2B8g%40mail.gmail.com.
