As I get older, it becomes obvious to me that I prefer simplicity. Much of life is built around being complicated, even the many devices we have now to make life more productive, make it less simple, make it less human, make us need more. Fuck that.
There is a difference between the simple and the simplistic. The former is an achievement; the latter is a mistake. Simplicity is not the absence of complexity but the discipline of distilling it to what matters. It is the art of removing what is unnecessary until only what is true remains. Simpleness does not seek to make things easy but to make them clear. It is the difference between a cluttered thought and a sharp one, between decoration and purpose, between noise and tone.
Tracklocross embodies this distinction with startling precision. It is not the sport of those who want convenience; it is the practice of those who wish to rediscover effort. A track bike, with its single gear, direct drive, and absence of suspension or freewheel, was never designed to leave the smooth predictability of the velodrome. It is, in its origins, a creature of purity and control: every motion calculated, every line precise, every surface consistent. To take such a machine into chaos, to send it shuddering through mud, over roots, down rough descents, is not a gesture of rebellion so much as one of reduction. It is the reassertion of what the act of cycling is, stripped of every technological mediation.
To choose tracklocross is to say: I will move with what I have, and nothing more.

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