On Thursday, September 7, 2017 at 9:25:21 PM UTC-7, Paul Clifton wrote: > > Thanks y'all. > > Bill, how does yours climb? I suspect it feels a lot different with the > saddle much higher and drops. But that puts you even farther back over the > back wheel, so I'm curious whether yours encourages taking it easy uphills > also. > > > My Bubbe mountain climbs extremely well. As you report, climbing is mainly about the motor, and drop bars put the motor in a position to be powerful and efficient. So, I agree with you that you have put yourself in a position that is too upright for power and efficiency and you are experiencing that fact. I'm also running SPD pedals on mine, and during steep dirt-climbs, being able to pull up on the pedals is helpful. I'm trying to tease out the objective meaning of the word "fun" when you and Patrick Moore talk about 'honking'. You both say that 'honking' is fun and/or that you enjoy 'honking'. The webpage that Patrick Moore shared, defining the term 'honking' makes it very clear that honking is both less-efficient and slower, so I think you both are just talking about subjective pleasure of climbing out of the saddle and mashing a high gear, and you don't care that you are 'wasting' energy. That's cool (for you). I personally don't find a bunch of enjoyment in mashing too high a gear, riding more slowly and less efficiently, but that's just me. Patrick Moore describes eloquently and prolifically about the meditative zen-state he achieves slowly mashing up a hill in a gear that others would consider too-high. It's not about speed, it's about something more 'mystical', I suppose, but it's definitely subjective. When somebody asks me if my bike "climbs well", I think of objective measurements, like speed. If I pin it on a single track climb, my Bubbe mountain is just a few seconds per mile slower than my contemporary mountain bike (according to Strava). At the top of one particular such climb (Meadows Canyon in the Berkeley hills), there is a short rocky and rooted pitch that right on the edge of the kind of thing I can "clean" (get through it without putting a foot down). If there are no hikers on that pitch I always take a run at it, and I clean it maybe a little more than half the time. I clean it more like 80% of the time with drop bars, and more like 30% of the time with flat/upright bars of any kind. I cleaned it first-try on my Bubbe mountain. By those semi-objective metrics I'd say my Bubbe mountain climbs extremely well, and I would attribute that in large part to the fact that I set it up to do that. I suppose some people would say that the bike is encouraging me to ride strong, but I think of it as my riding position encouraging me. If I swapped cockpits with you, and had a high-rise stem plus an albatross bar on the same bike, I'm certain it would not climb as well.
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