I had a thread last week about Albatross bars that I installed, coming from Moustache bars. The M-bars felt too low and far away, even with a short high stem. Flipping them would have brought them higher but not closer and put my wrists on a funky angle at the front of the bar. The A-bars were comfy, but I was almost a little too upright and hands too close, even with the stem low and pretty long stem. Much more comfortable than the M-bars for relaxed riding. But I felt like my hands were a little too close and just a little too high. So yesterday I flipped the A-bars. Now I had to jack my stem up as high as possible. The hand height feels good but still a tad close. I do like how i pretty much have an m-bar "aero" position now. But wish the stem didn't have to be jacked quite as high as it is. And should I now wrap the bars instead of grips? So today I ordered some Porteur bars because they seem to have less rise/drop than the A-bars, only 2cm. And I'm going to wrap them with leather tape and use regular road levers in the same position as M- bars, instead of these mountain bike levers. I'm hoping to end up with the hand positions of M-bars but more comfortable. Here's a pic of where I was this morning with the upside down A-bars. http://d2creative.smugmug.com/photos/655534929_e7C9n-O.jpg You can see there is quite a drop from center. And notice how high the stem is yet the grips are still lower than the saddle.
Then, after all this moving, flipping, etc... I got to thinking. I really hardly ever almost never shift. I'm always in the big ring. Always. And 80-90% of the time I'm in the same rear ring. I use one or two of the other rings sometimes. So I'm wondering... do I really need the convenient location of bar-end shifters? If I switch to downtube shifters I'll tidy things up. Two cables no longer getting in the way of handlebar bags. Two cables that no longer need to be worried about when messing with handlebars. And no longer having two protruding levers from my handlebars that get bumped. So i made the switch. Definitely not as convenient, but not really a convenience that I need. And the bars look much cleaner! When I get my new bars i'm going to plug them with wine corks. Now to go empty a couple bottles of wine. :D I'll get an updated pic next weekend when the new bars are on. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
