Craig in Tucson asked me to post this on his behalf as his posts aren’t posting for some reason...
Hey Alan, this is Craig (yea...so what?). When it comes to riding fixed, for knowledge, inspiration, and enlightenment, you always start with the English. Single chainring flip-flops were the standard set up for every bike sold, unless you had money, from the 1920's thru the 1940's. And these guys did everything on them (because you could only afford one bike): commuting, club rides, time trials, AND camptouring. From my perusal of bike catalogues from this period I've found that the standard gearing was usually in the mid-upper 60's. Racing (time trials were the only legal racing for years) was usually done on a 72" gear and that was considered a "medium" gear. In fact there's still an association that does "medium gear" time trials in the UK. Any Roughstuffing would usually require a gear in the 50's. Dingles are cool but I think, given where you live, you'll find that going thru the greasy hassle of manhandling the bike into a different gear isn't necessary. You'd be surprised at what one can do on a single 65"-67" gear. ( Motel touring the grasslands of southeast Arizona: https://www.flickr.com/photos/24722971@N05/23798789135/in/album-72157622053427539/ ) My fixed tourer ran a 44-41 double up front with a 17-19 fixed double/16-18 White Industries freewheel in the back. I don't remember changing gears too often (and that's going from unladen to a camping load). https://www.flickr.com/photos/24722971@N05/2561917302/ I would occasionally flip over to an 18t freewheel if I knew there was a long downhill. For what you're doing I'd start with a mid-60's gear and stay with it for a while. Get some experience (as in months) then take it from there. Why complicate things from the get-go? My dollar's worth. Craig in Tucson -- 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 rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
