update

its been a while, so a bit of an update
james on his bling machine and colin on his weight weenie have joined the singlespeed ranks.
my heffs special has been retired ( having disturbing thoughts about making it a fixie though....) my on one is now doing the SS honours for me. the black park race is going to be intresting it should be a sea of west drayton shirts.
as james has said we really need to have a SS only ride out in the new year, any suggestions ??

New singlespeed in the WDMBC ranks

We have gained another singlespeeder. It's Chris the light bulb. he is riding one of these;

its a Gary fisher 29er and it is rather large. Chris brought it out on the Wednesday night ride up to Black Park. we rode the race circuit twice at race speed and i recon Theo will be over geared running 36x16 ,bar the the first straight 32x16 is ideal. My self and Peter also had some great shoulder to shoulder argie bargie racing (did i just type that ?)

it was really nice to see John Jones out as well and he cannot wait to see one of us go fixie!

I think Paul was suffering a bit as it was his first SS ride and we were no hanging about and he was still recovering from doing the Bucks 100k (the bike was his present for completing it)

so the latest list is

Theo

Matt

Me

Peter

Chris D

Paul the light bulb

Phil E

any more??

Which SS solution?

vote away!
i think most of the WDMBC ss'ers all have different ways of stringing our cogs together
i personally use a half link chain but its not through choice.
what i love about single speed philosophy is just using what you have got.

here's to happy half link single speeding :-)

and here's a great article on single speeding from the late great sheldon brown

Thursday nightride

We did Theos new reverse dorny loop. it was good to see 3 singlespeeds out. colin flew over from uxbridge asdid Pedro and roy. It turned in to a bit of a high speed race fest with poor old roy and frances hanging on the back. belive it or not i was to blame for instigating it! LOL

My first 29er ride

We went to Trail Junkies on Saturday for G to take a test ride on a Titus Eleven. 

When we got there the bloke that owns the shop threw a Kona Unit 2-9 at me for me to have a ride on.

It's a bit agricultural, and it certainly turned some heads as we rode through Streatley and Goring.  There's something about these 29er things that just don't look "right" (even to Joe Public).  It felt a bit like riding a grown up MTB. 

It had normal tyres on but it gripped well in the wet sticky mud.  It took a while to wind up but once it was going it span along quite well.  I got up all the hills I pointed it at but it did somehow feel like hard work.  Solid forks were no problem on the 25km ride we were doing, even when banging down a flight of steps.  The brakes had been upgraded from cable disks to Magura Marta hydraulic discs and they were superb.  I'm not sure how it would manage through tight single track but I didn't get the feeling that it was going to be a problem as it turned in well whenever I asked it to (this was no XC rocket no matter what the wheel size).

There's no conclusion to this report other than I won't be dashing to the shop to buy a 29er but I wouldn't miss out on the opportunity to ride one again as it was a lot of fun.  It made me want to have a go on a cyclocross bike as that's got the big wheels and stuff but it isn't as clumpy.

I'd worked out a route from the shop (see below) it's a bit of a bridleway special but it's got a great flight of steps in it.

Matt

TrailJunkies ride - WDMBC Share your bike routes @ Bikely.com

A good sunday

what a good singlespeed weekend. Theo and Matt completing the downs link singlespeed to the sea (and return) and myself and 2 club members going over to chobham common and doing a loop.this was my ride

i am dissapointed i could not make the downs link ride though. got a night ride this week with Big colin and doing the Bucks classic 30k loop with a ride up to denham from the malt shovel. then its the Big trip to Spain with the club
                                                                        

Then there is Matts and Theos account:

Number one in an (hopefully) infrequent series.

The “Downs Link” is a cycle path on a disused railway line that links the North and South Downs Ways.

The West Drayton Single Speeders decided to use it as a route to get from Guildford to the coast at Shoreham. As we didn’t have a lift back from Shoreham we decided to ride it in both directions, a distance of about 70 miles.

For some reason both Peter Manley and Dave Walford had urgent business elsewhere. So only theo and Matt actually rode. Now those of you have ever ridden a single speed MTB will know that they are quite limited in the top speed department, so this this was going to take some time.It can only be described as a “Good training ride”. Every twenty minutes or so something exciting would happen, like the track would bend slightly or we would come to a gate.

Apart from that it was characterized by:

• Monotonous flatness
• Monotonous straightness
• Monotonous cadence
• Monotonous speed
• Ride time 5:45
• Average speed 19.1 km/h

Marginally more interesting than the turbo trainer or Hillingdon, but imagine doing either of those for 6 hours. I’m not sure either of us was actually that physically tired, I think we were more like hypnotized by the ride. So kind of quite fun, in a Zen-like way.Now we’ve finished we are actually quite tempted to do it again sometime.
Oh yes we will !

a good reason to ride singlespeed ?

it takes no time to clean

i hate cleaning my other bike when its this dirty !

Matt calls it my chocolate bike