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.

And why shouldn’t I? You’re only as old as you feel and, anyway, he’s about 6 times my age.

Actually I am enamoured of Wolverine because he reminds me of a friend of mine – an old friend for whom I have a lot of feelings and who is, to all intents and purposes, incommunicado and likely to remain that way (for those in the know, he’s my oldest Bud). And that’s all I’m prepared to say on the matter, although it does explain why I thought Hugh Jackman was hot in X-Men and but not in Van Helsing. Dell’Otto‘s renditions of Wolverine look, to my eyes, more like my friend than they look like Wolverine. Which is damn weird.

Why Ravenbait?
I liked the delicious Mrs Pike’s take on this: “Because it is.” There’s not a lot more to say about it than that. It started off as a joke amongst a certain circle of friends and it’s the sort of joke that, unless you were there, you wouldn’t understand and wouldn’t find funny.

What’s this cross product of Tank Girl and Ellen Ripley malarkey?
It’s a complicated pun.

Did you study any vector calculus at school? In mathematics, the cross product is a binary operation on vectors in a three-dimensional Euclidean space. It is also known as the vector product or outer product. It differs from the dot product in that it results in a vector rather than in a scalar. Its main use lies in the fact that the cross product of two vectors is orthogonal to both of them.

See the wikipedia entry for more.

All of which is a play on the idea that if you crossed Tank Girl with the Ellen Ripley Clone in Alien Resurrection, what you’d get would be a female with a vicious, violent streak, predatory instincts, a tendency towards crankiness and wearing the wrong size bras, and a fondness for beer, spliffs and mutant soft toys.

Me, in other words.

Of course the additional pun application of “cross” is simply too delicious to ignore. The section of my sig that reads: “You might remember that ‘annoyed’ is my natural state!” is not included on a whim. It is, for the record, a Wolverine quote.

How many tattoos do you have and what do they mean?
Three so far. Don’t tell my Mum. She only knows about two of them. I’m now feeling slightly unbalanced and will probably get another one for myself just to even things up. The raven tattoo has pretty obvious significance. The Pictish design is a double-disc and z-rod variant peculiar to Fife, and the third I had done is a bindrune that has so many double and triple meanings it would be impossible for me to explain it without giving the wrong idea. Basically those who need to know what they mean will know what they mean without me having to tell them. Which is handy.

How many bikes do you have?
Five, currently, although I find myself in need of something like a Stumpjumper and a Trice to complete the set. No, I don’t have plans to get as many tattoos as I have bikes. Don’t be silly. The bikes and tats have no direct numerical relationship.

What’s wrong with your eye?
Nothing. It’s fine. Oh, you mean the black…? Yes, well, that one is made of plastic. The whole thing. No, it’s not a contact lens. I do have an artificial eye that looks like an eye but, frankly, it’s always going to look like there’s something wrong with it so why bother trying to hide it? Why not have fun with it? The National Artificial Eye Service states that its job is to make its clients look “normal”. As far as I’m concerned normal was last seen hanging around by the photocopier and no one really knows what it looks like anyway. And the dull, lifeless staring thing that is supposed to make me look normal, whatever normal may mean, doesn’t. I don’t think anything could nor would I want it to. So I’m happy with the black until I learn how to make my own and then I can be as ridiculous as I like.

Just because you made the effort, I thought I’d put up the two I’ve had since announcing the FAQ:

What is your favourite species of frog?
It’s a toss up between Phyllobates terribilis or P. bicolor (poison arrow frogs) and Cyclorana platycephala (the Australian Water Holding Frog).

Which highlighter colour tastes best?
That would be the yellow, which tastes of insipid french dressing. Not that nasty stuff full of xanthan gum you find in supermarkets, but home-made french dressing that hasn’t been properly seasoned. The flavour of green highlighter is indescribable, and it has a scent that gets right up in the back of my nose like ammonia does. Mostly I don’t like highlighter colours because they don’t taste or smell like they should. The yellow should be greasy but is more vinegary. The blue should be cool and sharp and chalky-minty but it’s more like wet grass. It’s just all wrong.

I’ll get on with answering some other stupid questions in a bit.

You know, I don’t particularly want to become a sad Marvel fan girl (shut up Munky). I bought House of M purely because Toby mentioned Wolverine being about to rip Magento’s face off. But now Logan has his memories back. All of them. The real ones. And suddenly there’s Earth… what is it? 198? Whatever. And they’re calling it Decimation and now I’m going to have to buy all sorts of stuff I really have no interest in just to keep up with the bloody plots in the things I am interested in.

Damn you Marvel! Damn you Brian Michael Bendis!

And on top of yesterday’s catalogue of misery, today I forgot my trousers (ObUS: pants).

That’s not a problem a trip to M&S; can solve, unlike missing pants.

Bugger.

By the way, I’m about to start an FAQ for my section of RF, owing to the varied and numerous emails I get from people. This means I can be even more anti-social and just direct the correspondents I don’t want simply to ignore for whatever reason to the relevant section of the FAQ.

Now is your chance to chip in. Maybe you don’t feel you can live any longer without knowing what is my favourite species of frog, or what colour of highlighter pen I use by preference. Maybe there’s an itch in your crotch that just won’t go away until you’ve discovered whether I prefer the old style bananaguards or the new ones. If this is the case you really need to get out more, but ask away.

I bought this as a Christmas present for Munky. I liked Heavy Metal, although this might have been something to do with being stoned at the time I saw it. This had Alex Cox and Mark and Lard on the cover. It said it had music by Cradle of Filth. It appeared to have scantily dressed manga tottie in it and be British.

How much more up Munky’s street could it be without being a film of female bodybuilding cycle messengers racing fixies to a naked mud wrestling contest?

Sadly it’s poo. Utter drivel. Unwatchable shite. I can’t even remember what it’s about, although I do remember there was some bint with enormous boobs called Lady Violator and some horrendously crap voice acting. I can only imagine that Mark and Lard will do anything for a couple of pints.

Oh dear. I see from the production company’s home page that they’ve done a Dominator – Heavy Metal crossover. That’s going to be like watching the Nigel Planar Magic Roundabout having seen Dougal and the Blue Cat.

As I said, we watched The Descent at the weekend. It was the second time of watching for me, as I had previously rented it when Munky and Frood were off enjoying themselves at a Mika Bomb gig (I was too ill to go).

Bastards.

Standard melange of conflicting characters — with the twist that they’re all girls, my gods, what a shock — go down into a cave where they meet some creatures straight out of a D&D; Monster Manual (I’ll take 3d7 Kobolds, please Bob). Cue running and screaming, guys in monster suits, lots of Blair Witch style handheld IR filming and the inevitable point when a couple of the girls go all Ripley and start beating the crap out of the monsters with an ice axe, until the inevitable love-conflict comes out and we get the revenge thang.

Problems:

Not the ending, strangely. I liked the ending. But let’s start with WHO THOUGHT THAT IT WAS REALISTIC FOR ANYONE TO GO DELIBERATELY DOWN THE WRONG CAVE SYSTEM?

Then there’s the whole thing about being 2 miles underground. What species would drag a fucking bear 2 miles underground to eat it?

Boredom. If it hadn’t been for Munky squealing like a girl every time one of the pointy-headed freaks turned up I’d have fallen asleep.

Why do only female Kobolds get hair? Why didn’t the males have genitalia?

The poster-shot of Sarah standing drenched in blood having gone completely Ripley wasn’t quite as pleasing to the eye the second time round.

I’m getting to detest the required elements of conflict, dialogue, crisis and catharsis. I want something original, dammit.

I’m ticked off.

OK, so that’s a minor understatement.

Yesterday I went to take a rented DVD back to the shop (The Descent, if you must know). It’s… what? All of 6 miles, give or take.

Here is the catalogue of woe from that short ride.

1. Attacked by dog. This was apparently my fault for not riding around pinging continuously like a bat with crap sonar or making whooshing noises like a jumbo jet so that dog and owners could hear me coming from behind. Singing loudly apparently doesn’t count.
2. While signalling to turn right, hand smacked by car overtaking. This was obviously my fault as well, at least I assume so from the words “Fucking cunt!” yelled at me through the passenger side window. I was under the impression that it is the duty of the overtaking vehicle to overtake safely – how silly of me. Chipped my nail polish. Bastards.
3. OK, so this was my fault. Rode into pole negotiating supermarket car park as blinded by indecisive driver who couldn’t decide whether I was waiting for him or about to launch myself, lemming-like, into his path. Fell off. Ouch.
4. Had elbow polished by chavved-up Vauxhall Nova (or similar) doing about 60mph in a 30 zone. This was probably my fault too. For being there.

It got to the point where I was simmering; where, if someone else had cut me up or shouted at me, I would have thrown my bike down in the road and gone over and smacked them.

I am sick to the back teeth of the vilification of cyclists. Why do we always get the blame? At the end of the day, if I fuck up on my bike, I’m going to get hurt. That’s a major disincentive towards fucking up. So guess what? I tend not to fuck up.

Yes, there are some shite cyclists out there, who treat their machines as being methods of turning themselves into tweaked pedestrians. And maybe I should blame them for indecisive drivers not knowing what I’m going to do next. But as for the rest… what is wrong with these people? Can’t they just face up to being wrong?