a shift.

I've owned and ridden a singlespeed bike for many years now, basically since the second year I was in college.  The only real exception was my brief time living in UT, because it was too painful to ride one gear there.  So it comes as no real surprise that I've just spent another winter commuting 34x19 in the snow and deep cold 18 miles a day (for the most part (minus 25 sucks)).  I've put my time in, and can call myself a veteran singlespeed rider.  But this past weekend I decided to make a shift, literally.  I geared my Karate Monkey, and it's now set up as a 1x9.  The long slow plods weren't doing it for me anymore, and I've decided for at least until summer, I'm going to leave this bike geared and set aside singlespeeding.  It was nice getting to work faster and not feeling the "pump" and fatigue after each commute.  Efficiency is not a bad thing, right?  And there wont be that much more maintenance.  If anything, I'll go through chains less often too.  I know, it's odd that I'd choose to switch when riding is only getting easier, but I'm just getting sick of the slowness.  Anyhow, the one speed thing will come back, but for now, I'm enjoying picking my cadence again after many many months of following the familiar strange draw of one-speeding I've often chosen.