I ride pretty standard, narrow non flared, road drops on my surly disc trucker, but recently a car did a lil squish on them against a wall and now I need new bars. I have friction bar end shifters that I like and I'd prefer to keep them if possible.
I ride 80% road but also some gravel/dirt, very little single track. I also have quite narrow shoulders. When I'm touring I do 60-120km days. I don't have back problems at all but do have some fun hand nerve stuff so I'm considering adding something like https://redshiftsports.com/products/cruise-control-drop-bar-grips and only ride with padded gloves. I change up my hand position fairly regularly but really do enjoy riding on my hoods for the wrist position.
I realize that bars are a matter of personal preference but as someone who's never ridden anything flared or weird (velo orange crazy bars??) I'd love to be sold on what you love.
by sometimes_i_bike
3 Comments
I have used those for about 2 years now.
The too bar location ones get used a lot more frequently than the drop bar location in my situation.
My wrist and heel of palm likes the extra vibration dampening. I also ride in puppy paws position quite a bit so those helps with my forearm pressure.
My bar was specialized hover alloy for 1 year, and then switched to red shift kitchen sink with the loop.
Road bars suck. Only in the US are they prevalent on anything but road and gravel bikes.
It is as if Americans think you need road bike bars to be considered a “serious” cyclist. And, boy, do they want to be perceived like that.
My bars are custom ti oddity razorbars. 3-4 cm rise, 710mm, no upsweep, 30 degrees backsweep.
I have inner barends and some comfy grips – Sqlab winged ones of some sort
Go for the crazy bars. I went for it so I could get a better position when riding with my kid in the front mounted seat, and I’ll never go back to drops. You can probably get the bar end shifters on the horns. I ended up switching to an indexed shifter though. You can do some fun styling combining grips on the flat bars and wrap on the horns.