RoadWearier

I know it comes down to the rider, but for YOU personally how Hilly would it have to get before you ditched the SS and or Fixed. This is the last 6.5 miles of my rides. No, it's not the whole ride. I'm just showing the pertinent last bit I have to bike to get home. Obviously I'm also coming down that hill into pretty busy traffic with a light at the bottom of the hill.



I'm asking because I'm seriously thinking of getting a Wabi or Kilo TT. I live the mechanical simplicity of the fixie!

79pmooney

I need some information to know what I am looking at. Vertical scale? You have two final climbs of 2.0 what? I need help on both grade and elevation gain of the two. What gear are you riding? Brakes?

I've been riding fix gears forever. Love climbing on them but am getting older and don't do what I used to. I prefer to live in places where I can do a cool down of the last couple of miles but that is easier to arrange when you know before you buy or move that you will be riding fix gear. Did ride up ~150' to my first house every ride but it wasn't steep and I was in my 30s and 40s then.

You could ride a flip-flop wheel with say a 17 tooth fix gear cog and 21 FW. Stop and flip at mile 5.2. (Gotta have a brake though.)

I have two fix gears set up so I can ride fix-fix wheels so I can ride serious hills/mountains with gears as low as 42-24 and 36-24 and as high as 42-12 and 46-13. Stop and flip to use two cogs. One bike is set up with three fixed cogs. The other, I have to carry a chainwhip. Not really the answer for your situation.

You can run more than one chainring and have the two or more rings line up with their respective cogs. Now you can have really big gear ratio differences and have all work with a track end or dropout that isn't all that long. (As long as the number of teeth total between front and back doesn't change, the hub moves very little.)

veganbikes

I mean with the right gearing nothing really. However if I know I am going to be on a ride that is super hilly I probably will take a geared bike because I have multiple bikes. I mean it is easy enough to get a flip-flop hub and flip the wheel to the other side with a larger cog or freewheel.

79pmooney had some excellent points.
Also we have a Mooney in the shop now it is lovely blue and white beauty that someone has modernized slightly with some 10 speed DA. Such a pretty bike. Thankfully they aren't coming till Friday so I can look at it a bunch before that.

Regulatori

I ride fixed in downtown Seattle, we are known for our hills similar (we're a distant 2nd place) to SF.
It's a cliche but the term "spin to win" really makes sense.
I'm in my 40s now and run a super spinny gear (47x18 or 47x19) but I can still climb hills.
For downhill you just adapt and build up your cadence. If you think you're going too fast, just scrub some speed off.

What is your front ring teeth? Rear cogs are cheap, you could just run a larger rear cog at first (spinny/high rpm) and experiment to see how you like it.

Kiwisaver

For years I rode fixed 48x15 w/a 550 foot drop into work w/a 550 ft climb homeward. Most of the vert was on one hill. To climb it I just did shallow switchbacks. Then as I got stronger I deepened them until I was only doing 4 turns. This was very rural and at night as I worked 2nd shift. So no traffic worries.

My r/t daily commute was 42 miles. For 6 years my mileage averaged 12,000+. It seems crazy now, but it seemed normal at the time. So, there really are no rules. Find a gearing that works best for you on your commuting terrain. In retrospect I should have used ss to save on my knees, but I just loved riding fixed. lol