Why YOU might want to ride a single speed bike!

It doesn’t get much better than a nice single speed bike. Simple is fun!

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All right what’s up YouTube this is Colin from Colin does stuff and I’m making a video about my bike and some reasons why I love single speed bikes the first reason why I think single single speed bikes are great is that they look or they tend to look really

Beautiful so just the lines that you get from a nice single speed bike there’s no you know you don’t have a derailer back there obviously and I just think they uh they tend to look very clean which is well known and especially when you build one up like

This I’m very very partial to my bike I just think they look awesome and that’s that’s really important for me it’s kind of like you know a form of self-expression or or art maybe but it’s also something super functional that I get to ride and that brings me joy that’s the first reason

The second reason and these are in in no particular order is the Simplicity and cost so there’s kind of some caveats to this but basically a single speed bike has fewer moving Parts than a geared a traditional geared bike with the derailer um so the initial setup could be more expensive

For me I was working with this Surly straggler frame and it has the ability to take a derailer or to be set up single speed the reason it can be set up single speed is because hopefully I’ll have some nice b-roll insert shots closeup of these dropouts it has these horizontal sliding

Rear dropouts and they allow you to tension your chain which means to you know pull it back tight enough and run a single speed or I guess even a fix gear all that might be kind of crazy um and when you run a single speed I

Just have you know one chain on here chaining up front a rear Cog and basically I don’t have to pay for a derailer I don’t have to pay for a cassette those things can be expensive especially especially if you’re running like 10p speed or something like that so

That’s nice um I do have to replace my chain somewhat frequently but I think that’s because I ride a lot I use this as a commuter I’m running like a sham 8 speed chain on here I think you know a $20 chain which is pretty good every

2,000 km or under that really is is what I get in my experience but yeah way cheaper in terms of Maintenance you don’t cassettes are expensive uh when you get into the higher higher gears so love that about a single speed um yeah can be can be cheaper depending on your

Setup there are single speeds that are you know very fancy like belt drive single speeds are initially far more expensive however in the long run they’re so cheap because you don’t have to replace belts nearly as often as you have to replace your regular old metal chain but belt drive requires a specific

Type of frame that has either a separation somewhere in the rear end or an elevated chain stay blah blah blah okay that was reason number two the cost generally lower which is awesome reason number three is maybe the most important one of all um reason number three is that they’re

Really fun to ride and you just feel like you’re riding a bike and that’s it so those of you that have ridden lots of single speeds or maybe you even grew up grew up uh riding a single speed and it was just like second nature to you but

Basically when you don’t have to shift gears or you don’t have the option to shift gears you just you just pedal and sometimes it’s hard sometimes it’s easy easy you’re going downhill and you’re spinning out and you’re like dang I wish I could go faster well too bad cuz when

You go uphill you’re going to be happy that you just have this nice easy gear going up depending on the grade but it’s really simple it’s really fun to just just break or not break when you’re riding and don’t have to worry about shifting I think it uh I really love it

And whenever I get on a geared bike I’m like oh this is what it’s like to change gears and you have to do a little more thinking I find with a geared bike someone has told me that when you ride a single speed yes you only have one gear

Uh but it is always the wrong gear I do find that there are certain grades you know when I’m going uphill that I’m like oh this is perfect for me and you just really feel it other times it’s a bit of a grind maybe you stand up I think the

Look is simple the maintenance generally simple uh there are some caveats of that which I may go into yeah those are my three reasons why I love riding a single speed and why I think you could consider one and and the reasons why I have my

Bike set up in this way this custom fashion okay everybody hopefully my face isn’t too out of focus couple things I forgot to mention so yeah Surly straggler from 20120 Fall 2020 but I’ve removed most of the deal so normally there would be sirly you know lettering

Here they’re just like black stick on vinyl stickers or something pretty easy to remove I mean most B the logos are under the clear coat sirly just put stickers on which is sweet I was going for like this clean look of the bike without lots of interference and I was

Able to remove them that was great yeah just a thing I forgot to mention and now I’m going to film some more b-roll of the bike closeups with the 135 on the camera so enjoy Here’s my bike I’ll get on it right off into the sunset and uh maybe this will be the end of the video we’ll see okay now I’m coming back into frame cuz we’re not actually done cool now I’m going to go get the camera maybe I’ll feelm myself getting

The camera no I’m not going to do that