Why ride a singlespeed?

There's a thousand and one answers to that question, but todays answer is:

• Because they work. Bikes with gears almost never work properly - a sticky cable here, a bent and bent-back mech hanger there, a worn casette, a wobbly front mech, a wobby rear mech, worn out jockey wheels, chainsuck, burrs on the chainrings.... the list of geared ailments goes on and on. They only really work new out of the shop and even then the cables stretch. That nagging feeling that my bike doesn't work properly drives me mad and 2 cogs, 1 chain allows me to bypass all that and get on with riding.
  

The Choice

I came across a fragment of this poem in An Evil Cradling by Brian Keenan. The full text speaks (volumes) for itself.

The Choice

The intellect of man is forced to choose
perfection of the life, or of the work,
And if it take the second must refuse
A heavenly mansion, raging in the dark.
When all that story's finished, what's the news?
In luck or out the toil has left its mark:
That old perplexity an empty purse,
Or the day's vanity, the night's remorse.

W.B. Yeats