One Gear Is Enough

There are no derailleurs here. Just bikes, rides, people, and places that prove one gear is enough.

Single speed is not a hardship position. It's not the budget option or the beginner's mistake, and it's not really a training tool either, though people will tell you it is. It's a decision to remove one variable from a sport that has spent thirty years adding variables, and to see what's left when you do.

What's left, it turns out, is worth documenting: bikes built with whatever parts were on hand, races that treat a costume requirement as seriously as a finish time, chains that break at the worst possible moment, and a community of riders who have all, independently, decided that fewer gears means more fun.

What this is

404 Gears Not Found is a photography-first collection of single-speed bikes, rides, people, places, races, and the culture around all of it: mountain biking primarily, but gravel, road, cyclocross, bikepacking, and commuting bikes all belong here too.

What this isn't

It isn't a product review site, a race results database, or a replacement for the deeper cycling communities that already exist. It's a smaller, slower, more deliberate thing: a curated archive built one story at a time.

• culture
• single-speed