Brad Holtz

Mongoose Minigoose in 1989. That bike started my love affair with bikes and BMX bikes. I was 3 or 4 years old blasting up and down our street and eventually around town by myself and with neighborhood kids. That scene looked much the same as years went on, just with bigger kids. Eventually we were digging dirt jumps in the woods behind the YMCA, and even bringing our mountain bikes out there to jump, but still riding BMX.

The riding was always fun of course, but just as much or more, I felt a sort of freedom on the bike that I couldn't find anywhere else. It was freedom of movement, freedom from my family, freedom of expression, and perhaps most importantly it was mental and emotional freedom.

Looking back now, riding has always been meditative for me. Sports psychologists would call it flow state, Buddhists might call it something else, but being on the bike, everything else starts to fade. It's a beautiful thing.

How'd I get here, and why single speed?

That's a lot about why bikes, and a bit about single speeds with the BMX part. I also always had mountain bikes, from a purple lugged 20" Schwinn Sidewinder, my first "big bike" a Trek 830 (also purple, coincidentally), and then a Cannondale F600 hardtail. Those bikes took me further afield to school and skate spots around our little state of Rhode Island. Eventually, that Cannondale followed me to college down in Tennessee.

This brings us to a turning point of sorts. As a kid I'd go to the local book store and spend hours reading every bike magazine they had, which was surprisingly many! Dirt Rag and Mountain Bike Action were my favorites, and I distinctly recall seeing something about single speed mountain bikes in there. Maybe one of those little black and white advertisements in the back. Whatever it was it lodged itself in my developing brain and stuck there.

Early bike internet days allowed me to find single speed mountain bike forums and Fixed Gear Gallery. I was completely taken by this world of bikes that seemed to exist outside the mainstream. Staring at my hardtail in the corner of my room, I ordered a DMR SS conversion kit, a chainwhip, cassette locking tool, Salsa 32t chainring, short chainring bolts, and a chain breaker. When it all showed up, I gleefully stripped off all the fiddly bits and hangdowns, got it all installed with a nice straight chainline, and promptly took off for the trails. Those first few pedal strokes were all I needed to be fully and completely hooked. Suddenly I was a kid again, and everything felt quiet, light and playful.

Fast forward 20 plus years, I'm living in Southern Appalachia, and I've only ridden a geared mountain bike a few times during that span. I have geared bikes, but my favorite and most ridden are always my single speeds and fixed gears. I still get the same free feeling on single speeds that I don't get as easily or consistently on geared bikes.

Single speed bikes inspire simplicity, and in this world of ever-increasing complexity, that simplicity is even more welcome. Mechanical simplicity, and mental simplicity. Grab bike, and pedal. That's all there is.

• single-speed
• fixed-gear
• mountain-bike
• tennessee
• appalachia