[Closed] How many people ride ss as their only bike?

variety is the spice of life. SS when you feel like it Geared when you don't.

Yep, that is the sensible option I currently adhere to... something is nagging at me to stop being sensible and be silly though! 😉

SS as main bike, would, i think be too restrictive, but each to their own i guess.

SS Cotic Soul for main bike, fixie for commuter.

at the moment my bike is SS, but I can put the rohloff in the back in 15 minutes. I only have the one MTB now.

All my other bikes are SS: my commuter in London and my pompino at home.

well, i was getting very used to it and was getting ready for a full summer sticking to it......

But now i'm ****ed and all the ss fitness i gained over the last two months are about to lost..meh!

Been riding a 3-speed German bike for getting to a from work for the last few weeks, but otherwise I've been riding nothing but ss for a couple of years.

BigJohn/Stoner - how do you find descents? I'm worried that I'm gonna find them slow in comparison to on a geared bike. I know the answer is to ride my current ss (second bike) to the trail centres and see how I find them, but I'm just intrigued as to how other people get on. (fwiw, my road bike is a ss too - and I love it)

Plus, I don't want to spend weeks riding my second bike when my best bike is soo lovely...

Ah sorry Sharki! Bit insensitive I know! You might be surprised how much fitness you retain though... how long til you heal do they reckon?

(btw, when you're up to it we might have a few days work for you if your interested? Nothing exciting but we could put you up and feed you for the few days so you wouldn't have any overheads)

Singlespeed as an only bike is great. Simple - no worries about being on the wrong bike or the wrong gear, low maintenance - fantastic. I did it for years, fully rigid, hardtail and full-sus . . . then I discovered 9 speed, full-sus this time last year and, well I won't say the bubble burst, but riding back to the top for another go instead of pushing was so much easier. Never felt the need for gears on the downhills, you just get used to pumping for speed in the swoopy stuff and try to brake less.

Tried to go back last week - built up a lovely rigid singlespeed Kona Cowan jump bike, rode it once - absolute blast in my local woods . . . but it's on ebay now :<(. My only rigid singlespeed is now my BMX and I'm sticking with 4" travel and 9 gears for everything else. There, I said it 😉

JJ - on a SS, you stop thinking about speed so much. You do spend more time think about conservation of momentum and gravity though. Not literally of course, but "naturally".

Decents are little different.

The flats are where it differs most and that is where most anti-SS feelings come in. If your'e riding in a group then you may have toruble keeping up etc, thats not good. But I do most of my riding either alone or with my ride buddy who also rides SS, so even on the flat road bits we'll happily bimble along at the same pace.

Riding for fun isnt a race.

Decending at speed is a functino of gravity for most, and is independent of your gear system.

Climbing is what you want to make of it.

I like riding SS.
I ride Rohloff geared when I think it would make more sense/be more fun/not be so silly

Cheers, 'J' dunno, i've got fracture clinic tomorrow, no doubt they'll do nothing for a few weeks then decide to book me in for surgery in a few months time....

I'm loving the way work is coming in now i'm out of action....lol.

Chin up and all that.

generally fitness i'll retain but ss strength can only be retained from riding imho.

SS is great for most riding but for big all dayers I'd go gears. I have ridden the SS in the Quantocks, Exmoor, Afan etc.. and its bloody great to use the SS but it does knacker you out more quickly.

Hey Sharki get better soon!!

Fair enough Mama Dirt - if I do go for it I doubt I'll do it forever, maybe just for a year (or less?!) or maybe leave the idea until winter and do it then?

I have no idea about 'pumping' a bike, so would have to learn some new skills. braking less is surprisingly effect though I agree (although lately I have tried it out on my daily commute with some not so great results!)

We'll see - on Sat we're off to Spain for a week so I'll probably come back wanting a 5" full suss!

I haven't ridden gears for over 5 years and I have certainly never found it restrictive, nor have I ever held up geared riders because of it.

Yeah, sorry Sharki mate - me and Mike chatted about it the other week and decided to make you the offer but as the work won't be ready to do for a few weeks we hadn't bothered mentioning it.

Yeah, you're probably right re fitness, still I guess you'll have to see how long you'll be out of the saddle. Really do feel for you mate.

cheers hopster, as i found on the big stw ride at the weekend, if you've the strength and stoopidity, ss doesn't restrict you, but it can be unsociable as you need to ascend at the pace easiest for you, that usually means more rest time at the top 😉

No worries, if you can hold on i'll get fixed and get fixing up yer houses asap.

I used to ride just ss until I broke my collarbone. Since then it's been somewhere between 20 and 50% of the time.

Are you saying I am stoopid Sharki? Insulted now.

We'll see - on Sat we're off to Spain for a week so I'll probably come back wanting a 5" full suss!

Oh dear! You've just brought it all back. This time last year I'd just built up lovely Cove Stiffee (singlespeeded of course) - missed it like crazy when we visited my sister in [url= http://mamadirt.fotopic.net/p57140973.html ]Alora[/url] last Easter, but ended up posting a 'what rear mech' post on here from my laptop 😉 - can't imagine anyone wanting to s/s over there. Anyway on my return I promptly ordered a lovely new Kona Coiler and the rest, as they say, is history. Wonder if I can cram the Tazer into my hand luggage when we go back this year . . . hmmmmm.

If you go riding with the idea that you're not going to enjoy it because you can't do something, then you're not going to enjoy, right?

SS isn't necessarily about speed, but if your riding is, then it's the probably the wrong bike TBH. Stoner's explanation is about where I am with SS.

This is exactly where I found myself with SS >

[i]The flats are where it differs most and that is where most anti-SS feelings come in. [/i]

so I went for 1x9... on the rock lobster. Makes the bike just that little bit more versatile.

SS as only off-road at the moment and SS commuter.

I think a bit of time off the bike might bring Sharki back down to the same level as us mortals 😉

Heal quickly!

My only mtb bike is currently ss - on 2-3 hour rides its fine. Last year (on a Soul) I ran 1x9 on the Rough Ride and never needed more. I'm currently contemplating whether I stick with ss all year or go 1x9 for the summer.

Inbred SS and Spesh Tricross SS.

I either gear down (32/18) for Wales and enduros or run it as a 1x9 setup for a period in the summer for weekend trips.

Cheap as chips and loads of fun, plus it allows the brain to enjoy the ride rather than worrying about what gear to use!

The rigid SS is my main bike, but I can fit it with gears in an hour or so if needed.

I've got a geared Cotic BFe collecting dust, as well as a geared road bike and a spare SS if anything happens to number 1 bike.

Would be interested in how poeple cope with group rides. THinking of it for next winter as a lot of the stuff we do is very muddy and it ate my drive chain. Unfortunately it's mostly flat but I may just compensate with a higher gear. Currently do 41:16 on my commuter which gets me up everything easily enough.

Just flat roads that are the problem on the SS mountain bike, Munky.

i ran only a ss for quite a few years even when i was in the alps and it was fine as john says really its the long flats that kill you. but as my money increased and my bike collection did i got gears and still had an ss but a few months ago i sold the ss and only have geared bikes now. (i have an ss wheel for the crosscheck and an ss kit for the hardtail but dunno if i'll ever use them again as im so used to gears now)

Just riding a rigid ss at the moment (and strangely becoming converted to the idea,) - but that's because my main bike's buggered. 😥

I currently have just the two bikes, both with just one gear.

Genesis iO for off road
Genesis Flyer for on road

I have 3 geared bike frames in the cellar but have no urge to build any of them up.

I am down to only 2 bikes now!

Swapped the Pompino for a geared Kafenback recently for the road/paths and have a SS bred for the rougher stuff.

Not anti gears though, its all good.......

Yep, singlespeed since 1997 and s/s only since 2004 (when I sold my Mav ML7 - "IT")

OS Bikes Blacbuck singlespeed (Mav SC32, Juicy7's, 32:20)
Solitude 29er fixed gear drop-bar monster 34/36 - 18/20 dinglespeed

The only thing that hold me back are my crap skills and fitness, not the bike!

SSP

I probbly ride my SS more than my geared bike, as it's less hassle. The SS is the bike I can just grab and go, whereas the geared seems to need checking over a lot more; it needs to be kept clean, too, which is a pain, during our muddy winters. I can just bash the dried mud off the SS, bung a bit of oil on't chain, and off I go.

Somewhere like Epping, the SS is perfect, as it's pretty flat. Swinley does not in any way have any major climbs, even the Wall is doable. As for the descents, well, they're the twisty turny type, so you're not actually getting up to big ring speed, really. More just let go of the brakes and steer. And the Labyrinthy bits have climby sections, so it's about being smooth, which I find the SS makes me concentrate more on.

Wales, and anywhere with proper hills, I'd takes the geared bike. I'm no masochist. Gears were invented for good reason.

Oh, and my urban hack bike, the 'Pikey Bikey', is a SS. Gears are almost pointless in London. And a 27 speed drivetrain gets ground to buggery, with all the grit, diesel, salt and crap that comes up off the road.

Ridden gears twice in the last 2 years 8O. Once was Solo 24 at Bontrager last year, the 2nd was a dealer Demo day at work for the day.

Quite strange when you start to think...bloody hell when was the last time i used my thumb on a bike! Guess that's why my HiFi is up for sale for a Ti ss 🙄

I can only ride in one gear at a time,it's just the same really...... 8)

Plug for work, Simple for play...

S/S only here with no problems.
I opted out of fully rigid for a little more flexibility, now I use a lightweight 100mm that adjusts from lockout to all mountain.

I'm a southerner chilterns actually, Sunday I'm off a full day in the Peaks and I've just slipped on an 18 to ease the way.

No issues really.

unless you can have only one bike, why limit yourself?

Variety keeps it interesting for me.

All 3 of mine are ss.
29er for muddy stuff (32:18),17 year old road bike for black stuff (42:17)and bmx for falling off stuff (30:10).
I live in north wales and mostly ride natural stuff (steep/rocky) 35-45k on me todd,just not on the bmx.Not particularly suited to trail centres (any of em) but thats no great loss to me.
Stoner hits the nail squarely on the chuffin head,could'nt put it better myself (nice one mon).

i do

i do too
pompino fixed for road runs and rigid cotic simple for fun. i like the simplicity ( plus im a maintainance numpty)

Both bikes SS.

Kona Hei Hei (the original Ti hardtail)
Specialized Tricross Singlecross.

I enjoy even the smallest rides now. Certainly feel it's made me a better rider. Keep up the average speed and zero maintenance.

i have a pretty good choice but end up on my SS most of the time, great fun, I like the cruise feel, gears seem too hectic/fast and too much like hard work after an SS. I am amazed where you can go... up, down but it is the long flats that don't quite work on an SS