WWODBD?

Sometimes I wonder what Outdoor Bob would would make of the whole fixed gear craze amongst all the girl's jeans wearing dudes out there.

Like, how many hipsters do you think he could handle in a day before blowing his top and flying into a wrench throwing fit of rage?

For me, the number was one yesterday.

Guy comes into the shop yesterday with his top tube padded Pista Concept freshly plucked from the back of his car. He wanted to get his whip set up with a new cog. Why he would pay to have it done instead of purchasing the tools is beyond me.

Anyhoo, I just happened to be in the back the moment our Service Manager is cranking down the dude's lock ring with enough effort to make it look like he was trying to push the earth down.

Couple hours later he comes back madder than a dog shitting tacks. The guy was so furious his Weezer styled glasses were fogged over with rage. Seems his lock ring slipped nearly causing him to die when he had to make a panic stop.

Even worse than that, in his sheer desperation to avoid the Grim Reaper he scuffed his limited edition kicks when he pulled out a page from the Fred Flintstone playbook shoehorned his way to a stop.

After apologizing to the guy about the life risking inconvenience and assuring him we'd get his bike fixed, I asked him just what he was doing.

Long story short, the guy went straight from the shop to the top of Griffith Park where he proceeded to go 40mph on a brakeless fixed down a mountain road that ends with a busy 6 lane intersection.

When he got to that busy 6 lane intersection, the stoplight was as red as ODB's head after having to deal with the 20 year-old version of myself of a 110 degree full moon Friday. He said he thought he was going to be able to shoot the gap between cars doing 45mph and at the last second he realized he couldn't and went to skid stop but oops, his lock ring slipped! And the poor fella had to drop out of the hipster race he so wanted to win.

D'oh!

Unbeknownst to our hipster friend, moments before unleashing his tale of woe on my non-caring ears, I had being dealing with a guy who's epiphany of the year was "You mean if just one spoke breaks I should stop riding my bike before the others do?" so I really didn't care that I was taking my life into my own hands by asking a question of my own.

"Granted the cog that we just installed slipped but have you ever considering taking a step back to realize what you're doing is very far from the intended use of your bicycle and that riding a fixed gear without a break isn't exactly the smartest thing nor is trying to intentionally run a red light?"

The steam of rage that had cleared from the dude's glasses was suddenly back with a Charles Bronson vengeance.

"Nobody else's cog slipped! Only the one that I had your mechanics install!"

"Well that's probably because everyone else in your little race was smart enough to install their new gears days before so they'd be able to readjust their cogs if need be. Every knuckle head in the world knows that a fresh cog will slip after it's installed. Plus, why would you put on a new part and then go straight to a race? Even triathletes aren't that dumb."

"F@ck you! I'm gonna go on LAFIXED.COM and let all 3,000 people who subscribe know how bad this place sucks!"

Oh joy.

On the bright side maybe that means we won't have to deal with hipsters anymore.