That's one way to put it. I tend to use much less kind language to describe my own... bike quirks. :D

Slipping around on a fixie is very fun... never dealt with ice though... only mud on 23c

Climbs like a mountain lion, descends like a brick. My average speed over distance was 1.9 MPH faster on the fixie than on my geared road bike, even with the severely capped top speed. Also a lot cheaper to maintain given the 250 miles per week.

Thanks! Not nearly as much as I would have suspected. Sure, the rim brakes were useless, but that's a non-issue on a fixie. There was absolutely no touching the front brake in those conditions anyway. And the drivetrain just grinds up whatever gets in there. I expected at least one fender to get packed up, but I suspect the slicks also made a nothing burger of that.

I was a hater since I gave up my training wheels at four years old. "Bicycles can coast?!"

On my bike rides home from work, I would frequently stop in at the LBS a few blocks from my house and have a pint with them. Then in 2009, the bike shop got in the new model of the Kona Paddy Wagon, and I thought it was sexy AF; too bad it was a fixie. The shop manager offered to buy my next beer if I gave the fixie a try, but I was determined to continue being contemptuous. So just to placate them, I went for a spin.

I wasn't even out of the parking lot, and I knew I was buying this bike. I paid for it on the spot, and one of them employees offered to drop it off for. I was hooked.

Fixies are indeed fun. The simplicity, to me, is the bicycle distilled to its purest form. If one's rides involve a lot of foul weather commuting, a fixie seriously reduces maintenance cost and time. I also like my gears, 3x9 being my absolute favorite. If my road bike can't have ridiculous gear range with a 17 gear-inch wall climber, it ain't no bike of mine! But a fixie is something different.

The inertia carries the drivetrain over top dead center. So climbing huge hills becomes waaaay easier than one might imagine. It might take a bit of iteration to get your gearing dialed for your terrain and to optimize skip patches. But then you're dialed.

I have used my fixie for brevets up to 400km, credit card tours, and even two ultralight bike tours. Most days, I have to carry too much work and errand stuff to fit on a road bike, so I'm usually on my cargo bike these days.

My fixie has brakes, so for me, less strength than JRA. On my snowy ride, stopping the cranks took no effort at all. But keeping the wheels turning acts as a kind of traction control: if the cranks suddenly require less effort, that tells me there's an icy patch under the snow and I need to be extra careful. That surprise blizzard was my very first snow commute where I didn't fall. It was also my first time doing a snow ride on my fixie. Not getting a bunch of speed in the first place helps a bunch.

Now, if you're asking about riding in dry conditions, let 'er rip. I can spin comfortably up to 135 RPM, and have gone up to ~150 RPM with A LOT of pucker. Usually, when descents got to 135, I would take my feet out of the pedals, which is its own kind of bad idea.

More or less....

Ideally you should be resisting with your legs on downhills to control your speed before it gets to that point though