caistor_bmx":3bsbrr44 said:
I know alot of these sites are very anti single speed so be good to me!
caistor_bmx":3bsbrr44 said:
Oh no, I'm not illegally cycling am I!? I like to have fun with my bike, surely that's the aim with cycling? I am running a back brake only and it seems pretty much the same as front only except I skid sometimes and the cable is held on with blue 'happy 21st birthday' balloons. I have also stuck a non standard sticker on her :shock:
You seem to think that people on Retrobike will tell you off for misuse of a nice old frame. I assume that you think this because you have already visited LFGSS, which is full of idiots with big internet voices who like to make themselves feel good by taking new members on their forum down a peg or two.
They also desperately aspire to have the testicle size/unbalanced mental state that real bike couriers have. Said physical and mental abnormalities are what allow couriers to ride round London all day long at breakneck speeds without the benefit of brakes, and in most cases stay alive.
Retrobike members, on the other hand, are generally a friendly and well-balanced lot, and rather than thinking "this chap has ruined a perfectly good old frame by putting purple bits on it and stripping it of gears", are actually thinking "great, this chap is riding around on a nice old frame, this is A Good Thing because he hasn't been tempted to buy some awful BSO and has kept a perfectly serviceable old frame in use".
However, the flipside of this is that Retrobike members, unlike LFGSS, are not so obsessed with wearing tweed and buying gold headsets that they forget the fact that riding with only a back brake is REALLY STUPID. You will either:
a) be forced to ride so slowly to avoid piling into the back of queues of traffic that you give up cycling altogether, or
b) approach cycling with such disregard for your/other people's safety that you maintain good speed around town (running red lights and narrowly missing pushchairs, shopping carts etc) but piss off every other road user and eventually get run over by a lorry.
Keep your front brake, ideally go fixed so you at least have some decent stopping power at both ends. Or get two brakes. I used to commute 100 miles a week on my fixed gear bike and I would never have gone without brakes.
I'm in a bit of a mood this afternoon for which I apologise in advance
