Chuck proposed:
"Tim, you can get use to 39cm. And besides, don't you remember the saying on the New York fashion runways, "You have to suffer for fashion, Darling!" Can apply to bicycles too...
Chuck Schmidt SoPas, SoCal"
Chuck, I could not disagree more with this statement. Well, ok the first line...the rest, about suffering, I agree with, as in, narrow bars make for suffering. Bars that are too narrow (and 39 c-c bars are too narrow for almost everybody, imho), offer no upside whatever, and make for some real disadvantages. Every time I put another 42cm c-c bar on a bike I breath a big sigh of relief. I have 44" shoulders, and 39cm bars are like a weird form of torture for me. Steering is lousy, leverage is lousy. Everything is lousy about them.
Why narrow bars on so many of the classic road bikes, even the taller ones? I'm gonna take a wild guess at two reasons, someone please fill me in otherwise: 1) narrow bars make for more room in the peleton. An ancient justification, hard to accept given the advantages of leverage provided by wider bars, esp. climbing hills. 2) for a lot of years, most (not all, but most) European pros were tall, skinny guys, or just skinny, with modest shoulder width, and they could tolerate those ridiculous narrow bars.
Ok, fire away! Nobody's gonna change my mind though. I'm with GP on this one: wide bars good, narrow bars bad.
Charles "where's my 44" Andrews SoCal