let me start off by saying how relieved we are to hear you’re doing well after getting hit by a drunk driver on your bike.

  well, thanks.

can you tell us what you remember about the accident?

  i can remember being on the group ride in the morning, turning around and heading towards home.  then i remember being off loaded from the ambulance to the emergency room.  that’s about it.  i’ve gone out to the stretch of road where it happened.  i walked up and down and didn’t remember anything. 

what were your first thoughts when you came to? did you have any idea what had happened?

  i was told what happened that day at the hospital. but, to be honest, i was in and out a bit.  people who came to visit have told me i would have the same conversation with them like four times in a row.  there are big gaps that whole day.  since then i’ve read the police report, it was like i was reading about somebody else. spooky stuff. 

what kind of therapy are you going through and how long before you can get back on the bike?

  i did something like 8 weeks of physical therapy on my sprained right ankle and beat up leg.  nothing was broken, so it went well i suppose. i was wearing a back brace for three months. that just came off two days ago, this past wednesday, on the 18^th.  i’m not sure when i’ll be riding again.  it’s still pretty damn uncomfortable.  i expect next year will be treating me pretty well.  at least that’s my goal right now.

what has happened to the guy that hit you?

  he was found and arrested the day he hit me.   hit and run, drunk as hell.  all the good stuff. he’s been in jail since as far as i know. he’s looking at multiple felonies and i think he’ll be doing a few years.

on your site you’ve posted case after case of cyclist getting hit over the years and have been one of the most vocal proponents of bicycle safety and sharing the road. how has this experience changed that?

  good question. i mean, i felt empathy for cyclists before, but this really does hit a lot closer to home.  sounds like a cliché, but it’s true.  the day i got out of the hospital, my daughter turned six months old.  i couldn’t pick her up, actually i couldn’t do that till this week, so my wife would have to set her in my lap so i could hold her. that first night as i held her i cried a bit.  and i’m not ashamed to say it.  pretty heavy stuff when you realize you damn near had your ticket punched.  some drunk bastard him me from behind at noon in broad daylight while i was riding in the bike lane.  i did everything right, and i still got popped.  if it can happen to me, it can happen to anyone.  at any time.

let’s talk a little about your site drunkcyclist.com. how long have you been doing this?

  i started it in september of 2000.

what got you started writing?

  lack of anything else to do really. i got my first computer that year, and a friend lent me a book called html for dummies.  really. it all started there.

did you ever imagine that it would get as big as it has? do you have any idea how many unique visits you get a week?

  no, i never really thought much about what it would become. at first, there would be like 3 unique visitors a day.  and i would know who all of them were.  then it hit 78.  i can remember it clearly, 78 people looked at my site and i realized i had no idea who was reading this shit anymore.  it just grew from there.  i’m not sure of the weekly total of unique visitors.  but i just checked the stats for the month of october – 82,888 up till yesterday, which was the 19^th.

you probably get an ungodly amount of fan and hate mail. can you share with us your most memorable of either or both?

  ah jesus, love mail, hate mail, i get it all.  at least 100 per day. i spend a whole lot more time reading and responding to email than i ever thought i would.  but i get a whole lot of information from those emails. and i post a lot of stuff on the site as well.  most memorable?  i guess when david millar wrote in (yeah, the pro roadie who got popped for epo) i realized a lot of people were reading my pill party website.

okay, enough about you let’s get to the bikes.  how many do you have and how many only have one gear?

  there are about 16 bikes in the garage right now.  eight of them are single speeds.  and of those eight, five are fixed gears.

tell us about your first single speed and fixed gear bikes.

  i guess my first single speed was way back when i was a kid. everyone had single speeds.  i think that’s a big part of the draw, at least for me.  it’s just a bike.  sometimes you have to push it, and that’s ok.  i had a few single speed cruiser type bikes over the years, and they were all cool.  my first single speed mountain bike was, i think, a bike i had where i just started taking parts off it.  i was working at a shop back then and it was just too much to try and keep the damn thing running.  so i made it a single speed.  i’m not sure, but that first one might have been an aluminum raleigh. then i had a specialized mtb i made a single.  my first one with horizontal dropouts and no derailleur tap was a steel kona they dug out of the scratch and dent pile or some shit and sold to dealers as a frameset only.  this is before they had a single speed in their catalog.

my first fixed gear was an old steel fuji frameset i got from big gay randy.  i had that for a few years before i finally gave it back to him. it’s still around; someone else has built it up since.

what was it that made you decide to loose the gears and what about riding the one geared bikes is appealing to you?

it’s nice to have a bike where you just have to check the tire pressure and grab a water bottle before you ride. i have this dually thing where so much shit needs adjustment, it’ll make you crazy if you let it.

how much time would you say you spend on your one geared bikes compared to your geared ones (prior to the accident, of course)?

  it depends where i’m living. up here in flagstaff, i haven’t been riding the single speed as much as my geared two niner.  of course, i may just be riding that because it’s got big wheels. i haven’t built a single speed two niner yet.  but I’m going to.

when i lived in tempe, i rode a single speed exclusively for a long time.

if you could pick or build your ultimate blinglespeed or fixie what would it be? frame? components?

  right now i’m going to build up a scandium kona two niner with gears and one of their steel single speeds. i’m going all two nine all around. as far as parts, whatever, xt is more than good enough.  and whatever parts i happen to have lying around. i’ll be taking apart my 26 inch wheeled single speed to build up the two niner.  so all those parts will be the same, i just have to lave up a new set of wheels. i even have the rims already. 

there’s a lot of talk out there about how single speed riding and especially fixed gear riding is becoming too trendy. what are your thoughts?

  i don’t know if it’s “too” trendy.  but it is definitely trendy.  case in point:  my man bgr was wintering down in tucson a year or so back, and there were these kids riding fixies around all messengered out. as if any of them have ever worked as a bike messenger. converse sneakers, black of course, messenger bag with all the right patches and pins, tattoos and no helmets.  just an old cycling cap that said something like campagnolo or cinelle or merckx.  and when bgr would give one of ‘em a courtesy wave as he rode past ‘em, they’d just give a stone faced blank stare. if they even acknowledged bgr at all. and bgr was on a fixie too!

i dunno, shit like that kinds bums me out. these guys look like they’re out of a fucking magazine spread. and they’re copping attitude to a guy who’s been riding fixies since they were in elementary school. 

but, no the other side of the same coin, more people on bikes is a good thing.  even if 30% of the new cyclist crowd can suck my dick.

lastly, got any advice for someone out there who wants to build up his or her first single speed or fixie?

  have fun with it. they’re just bikes.  you can cobble something together out of a bike you already own or go all boutique and really drop some coin.  it doesn’t matter to me either way if you’re having fun riding your bike. that’s the important part.

thanks for giving us your time and for being the first interviewee of singlephile.net. I think i speak for the thousands of your cycling fans, one geared and multi-geared alike, that we hope your recovery is swift and we’re happy as pigs in shit that you’re back working hard (relatively speaking) at drunkcyclist.com

first interview?  i thought this was old hat to you by now. 

one last thing, i sure do miss the stables bar.  we had some good times down there.

i have no idea what you are talking about. time to adjust the meds again. doctor? doctor!!!