Bike Hugger 

This is Mark V’s last installment from Interbike ‘06, focused on the fixie scene. You can click through any of Mark’s pictures for larger versions in our Interbike gallery.

Las Vegas is a parallel universe where the normal, established laws of statistics and geometry do not function. For example, rather than a straight line, the shortest distance between any two points within Las Vegas is a casino (seriously, try it). While walking thru a casino, you’ll see people put money into brightly lit machines with the expectation of receiving something back. Yet, statistically these people receive much less than they put into these machines, but they come again and again to bid their money a boozy farewell. If a person was putting money into a brightly lit Coke machine in … say, someplace like Tallahassee … and that Coke machine failed to reward that person even just once, that guy would be PISSED. But in Vegas, he’d pull up a chair, light a menthol cigarette, and happily keep popping money into that machine.

Like a black hole distorting time and space, Vegas warps the hearts and minds of men, not with inexorable gravity but with a seductive promise. Give them just a little bit of payout, show them a little bit of skin…and they’ll form a cue to hand you their money. Actually, Interbike is a bit like that too. Vendors trot out their sexiest bikes for retailers, hoping to lure them into a decadent season program order. Panting bike shop nerds pace the isles of sensuous product, sweaty hands aiming cameras at the naughty bits. Still, tastes differ even within the niche of track bikes.

You like Euro chic? Get an eyeful of the Xtrack FP from Pinarello (above) at the Gita booth. Full-carbon frame and fork, integrated headset. Underneath the famous Pinarello blue paint you can see plenty of luscious 12K carbon weave peeking.

The fork is a track specific model with a unique shape, not nearly as hideous as the forks on their road bikes. The Xtrack looks burly enough for sprinting, but I didn’t have the opportunity to climb up on the rack and wrestle the bike. Plan on parting with $3900 for the frameset for that pleasure, but if that’s more fixie pleasure than you need, the Xtrack has a slightly frumpier alloy sister called the Surprise Pista.

Not exotic enough? Well, France’s Corima has a nasty hot replacement for their Cougar track bike, the bike that over the last decade has won buckets of medals on the track. The new VIF frameset’s profile is unmistakably Corima, but up close you can see how the modular nature of its construction allows the bike to be built in custom geometries. The Corima put the new design on a serious diet (600gr lighter), but the most obvious differences between the old Cougar and the VIF (“very impressive frameset”?) are the new bike’s integrated headset and seatpost. The bike’s finish is a bit more austere than the Italian bikes, less Gaultier and high heels and more combat boots and vinyl corset. The price? Well, let’s say that this carbon-fiber temptress is aimed at a man with a large family, because selling your firstborn may not be enough.

If you looked into the Swiss-based BMC booth, you could see the one bike of theirs not currently associated with an athlete sanctioned for doping. The BMC track bike has the distinctive bonded carbon and aluminium construction directly adapted from their road bikes. Europe’s Merckx, Casati, Spuik, and De Rosa also had track bikes in their booths.

New England’s Independent Fabrication had a steel Crown Jewel frameset in the track option, the same one featured in their catalog, with a saddle custom painted with a Japanese rising sun motif and a “Tokyo pearl white” paint. However, if you want the real deal for Japanese track bikes, you needed to visit the Euro-Asia Imports booth. EAI brought frames from revered keirin-builders Nagasawa and Gan Well Pro (above). The keirin frames are all lugged steel, and terminally classy to boot (check out the custom cast Nagasawa track ends), but if you gotta have more cowbell, Bridgestone has a full carbon frameset.

Bridgestone’s race frames were once sold under the label “Anchor”, which is even funnier than Orbea selling a road frame called the “Orca”. The Bridgestone’s carbon track frameset (below) has been available for a few years now and has been used by Japanese national team members. The bike on display still adhered to traditional, keirin-style threaded headset and quill stem.

As hot as these bikes might be, most of us may find it hard to buy a bike that costs more than our car is worth and yet has no brakes nor shifters. Some riders may yearn for the purity and simplicity of a fixed gear that doesn’t liquidate the kids’ college fund. Don’t worry, the market this year is providing more affordable fixies than ever. Bianchi, who with their bargain Pista model was the first to start this trend a few years ago, introduced an aluminium “Fremont” road fixie/single-speed complete with front and rear brakes and a flip-flop hub. Kona now has an attractive steel fixie that has a straght-blade steel fork with investment-cast crown. Schwinn has a model named the “Madison” harkening back to their 1980’s entry-level track bike.

Manufacturers now acknowledge that most fixed gear bikes live on city streets, not on the banking of a velodrome. Though there will be riding purists out there who disdain brakes or bottle bosses on their track bikes (even though they’ve never seen a track), many of these new fixed gear bikes even have rack/fender mounts. For the fixed-gear commuter, roadie cross-training in the winter, or the no-nonsense messenger, a reliable, versatile bike that is prepared to withstand daily abuse makes a lot more sense than exotic race machines.

It’s the last day of Interbike, and tonight I return to regular world, where the average person doesn’t know the difference between a velodrome and a palindrome. Now that I think about it, the average American sadly doesn’t know what either of those words means. Track season is six months away, so I’ve put my race bike up for the winter. I’ll be on the streets of Seattle getting my fixed gear fix. In the regular world, the shortest distance between any two points is marked by a sign that reads “No Bicycles or Pedestrians” and statistics suggest that this winter I’ll be wearing Goretex rather than suntan lotion. It’ll be hard to NOT yearn for the Vegas sunlight and neon nights, but what’ll break my heart is the profound lack of girls in miniskirts handing me free champagne at five o’clock.