Single Speed

 A couple years after I built the cyclocross bike I decided to build a single speed mountain bike, don't ask me why. I bought a Niner One Nine frame, scandium, super light. I built a set of wheels and bought cool single speed components. I think the finished bike weighed about 18 pounds. I was racing a short track cross country series in Jacksonville with my geared mountain bike and took my new single speed to try during warm ups.When I drove up to the race site I heard "Oh good, Dave brought his single speed we can have a single speed category tonight". So I had to race it. It wasn't as bad as I had feared. There was a long uphill gravel section at the start where I had to stand out of the saddle but the rest was woop de do single track downhill. I think there was only one other guy riding single speed. I kept riding it in the short track cross country races. There were several Short Track race series that year and I raced them all. There were only a couple other guys racing single speed so I always finished on the podium, so to speak. The Jedi Mountain Bike weekend was the State Championship so double points. There were only two single speeders in the short track race. The other guy lapped me twice. At the end of the season OBRA listed me as the number one single speed mountain bike racer. The guy that lapped me twice at the Jedi race was second. It was kind of bogus but I did race a lot of times.