I noticed on the Death Ride last year that I was about the only rider in the drops riding into the wind blowing down Carson Pass (moderate grade) and through the valley around Markleeville. At least that was my impression, I may not have been watching closely enough. I'm not that flexible but toward the end of the ride my back was still feeling fresh in a low tuck in the drops, it was great! Before raising the bars to just below saddle height my back would always hurt like hell after a long ride, breathing seemed constricted, and my legs didn't feel as in sync with my upper body.
It seems that the high bars let the skeletal structure and musculature get "linked", not "kinked" :)
At 12:21 PM 5/24/2001 -0400, TW406@aol.com wrote:
>Is to ride on the tops and levers, not the drops. Been doing it for 30
>years....dah
Okay, okay, I've been dragged me into the OT discussion.
To me, the whole point of raising the bars is that you can get aero in the drops or you can sit up! Most folks I see around here are either doing what you are, i.e. using half their bars, or complaining that those bars are too low. Why have the drops so low that you never use them, and why not have the tops high enough to get tourist-comfy?
My input on a couple of other contentious points (in for a penny...) is
that I think the slightly higher headtube on my Riv (built into the lug)
combined with its slightly sloped top tube is a good look. And I think
"Leave GP out of this, he's not a builder" ignores the very real fact that
he's had an impact on the design consciousness of the industry, and IMHO,
it's all good.
Jeff Slotkin
TheLocalSpoke
Goose Creek, SC