I got asked this on the train a few months ago. There aren’t many fixies in Exeter. There’s Whippet, Nic and Andy from Bike Shed, Munky and me. I think I’m the only girl riding fixed in the area. Could be wrong. Doubt it. Fixie riding, although gaining in popularity, is still a minority thing, and there are very few girls doing it other than the super-cool cycle messenger chicks.

I’m not really sure why I started. I only heard about the concept of fixed-gear riding about three or four years ago. When I did hear about it I was adamant that I wasn’t going anywhere near a fixed gear. It seemed too much like masochism to me, especially living in the corrugated landscape of Devon – we’ve invented gears. It’s possible to get loads of them on a bike now (my Pinarello has 20 on only a double chainset). Why would anyone want not only to give all them away but to give up the ability to freewheel as well?

For those of you out there who don’t know what a fixed gear bike is, a fixed gear bike has one gear and no freewheel. If the wheel is going round the pedals are going round and vice versa, backwards or forwards. The chain directly links the sprocket on the hub of the rear wheel to the chainring at the front.

I suspect, if I’m being absolutely honest, it was my competitive streak. Munky was getting a fixed. If he could ride fixed around Devon then dammit I could too. Besides. It sounded fun and exciting and by then I’d heard about On One‘s Il Pompino. The idea of a girl riding around on a bike named the Italian slang for “blow job” tickled me immensely. And the Il Pompino was a singlespeed.

I needed to know if I could handle it and like it before I spent a pile of cash on a new bike.

So I built Blackbird – FGG#1556. Incidentally, if you look at the listings on FGG you’ll notice that there’s a little symbol next to the girlie bikes indicating they belong to girls. There aren’t that many. There isn’t one next to mine – obviously Dennis thought I was a boy Sam.

Blackbird turned out to be a total hoot. She cost me less than £200 to build and I rode her all of the 2004/2005 winter. I did a lot of firsts on that bike. She was my first fixed, first self-built wheel, first do-it-myself headset replacement (help from Munky notwithstanding). She is long, lazy and fun to ride. She convinced me that, while I might not get the whole fixie fanaticism I had seen in others, I could ride fixed and enjoy it.

So I bought Shackleton. It was love at first sight. That cathedral-like rear end, the astonishing responsiveness, the stiffness of the frame… it felt like that bike and I were made for one another. And what we like to do best is traffic-jamming.

Traffic jamming, in case you’re the sort of cyclist who sticks to paths or you are not a cyclist at all, is the sport of beating the cars at their own game by virtue of being smaller, more agile, more nimble and able to fit through gaps that they can’t. If it were an Olympic sport I’d be trying for the team. It was riding that bike in traffic that made me want to become a cycle messenger, just so that I could do that all day. It puts a grin on my face of which Chorlton would be proud.

That was reason enough, but then I did my first moderate distance ride. Forty-five miles from Arbroath to Upper Largo in Fife in a hellish headwind. And it was fine. It was almost easy. I’d finally broken my fixie distance virginity.

Since then I’ve hardly ridden my other bikes. The Pompino is just so much fun. Fundamentally, fixed is fun. I can pace myself better on the fixed – I don’t burn up the miles like I’m on a 10 mile TT because, even if I do come across a fellow commuter to race, my competitive nature can sit easy in the knowledge that I’m riding a 70″ gear fixed so I’m most likely harder than him already anyway! It’s better on my legs, because they’re moving all the time and so they don’t get a chance to seize into painful rigour after a heavy honk up a steep hill.

I’m still not a fixie fundamentalist. I enjoy all sorts of riding. I wouldn’t attach the trailer to the back of my fixed gear to do the shopping – 30kg of shopping on a 6 mile slog mostly uphill deserves gears. I wouldn’t necessarily go cycle camping with four fully loaded panniers and a tent. I think a bike weighed down that much is much easier to get up a hill if there are gears to use. But if it’s just me and a couple of bits and pieces that’ll fit easily into my courier bag or the Carradice, then I’m more likely than not to take the Pompino; and I wouldn’t consider taking any bike other than Blackbird for jobs that involve leaving my machine locked up for hours in a place where it might get stolen. Anyone trying to ride Blackbird away, with her big gear and twitchy front end, would end up flat on his back in short order and she’s not exactly a thief-magnet anyway.

There are all sorts of reasons why I ride fixed. The man on the train asked me if it was for control. Maybe. I don’t think you get that much of an advantage, and I’d be tempted to say that there is a disadvantage when it comes to emergency braking. Mostly I ride fixed because I like it. I like the feel of it and I also like the way it makes me feel about myself. I can do this. I can ride a 70″ fixed gear bicycle around Devon.

Hot chick with super powers? With the full-on lycra and my Pompino dancing up the hill into Newton St Cyres, I certainly feel like one.