The simpler the better.

The single-speed rocks! I rode the green beast every day this week, racking up perhaps 150km on my daily commute. And it's fun. I can even feel the slight gain in efficiency through not having the derailleur gears. My commute is pretty flat so it doesn't present that much of a challenge and I can carry what I need in my shoulder bag which keeps things nice and simple for the odd day I don't ride. Hmmm, might be time to move the panniers back out to the shed.

The bike reminds me of the single-speed bikes of my youth in the days before BMX. They were heavy backpedal brake monsters, bombproof and heaps of fun.

I'm going to stick with this bike for a while because I'm enjoying it so much. No doubt there's a bit of a novelty factor there, but my times to and from work are about the same despite losing a little bit of top-end speed. The fatter tyres make the bike paths far more manageable too. The beauty of this machine lies in it's simplicity. It's testament to the fact that bikes are getting too fiddly and complex.

Sadly the experiment will end in a couple of months with my move to Hobart. I'm thinking of an eight-speed internal hub for the hiller southern city.

I just noticed that I've passed the 10,000km mark for this burst of cycling. Yay me!

1,441km so far this year.