So, I was doing a little tidying up in the garage, and going through old bike parts and gear. For some odd reason, I’ve kept worn out derailers and cassetts. I’ve kept worn out chainrings. I’ve kept worn out chains! Shift and brake cables. Pedals with frozen bearings. I think that I thought I might do some kind of cool project with them. Well, years later, I haven’t done any kind of project, and it’s time to clean house.
Most alarming, however, is the bar problem. You see, I work in IT. That means that my hands and wrists only get a work out punching keys and clicking a mouse. So, I’m forever in search of the perfect handlebar. You know – the one that doesn’t tweak the wrist, or put a weird pressure on a nerve in my palm, or make my hands tingle and go to sleep. The result is that I’ve purchased a lot of handlebars over the course of that search. As I pulled them out of bins and off of shelves, I counted them. Like sins. 9 bars. Various forms of drops, flats, risers, mustache. You name it. Those are the bars that are not on a bike, mind you. There are more than a few that are actually mounted on bikes.
So, I’m ditching most of those bars. Most have 31.8 bar clamps, but some have 22. There’s a FSA compact wing, a RaceFace Cadence, a Salsa Woodchipper, a no-name mustache bar, and a Nitto Randoneur. There’s a Marin riser that I chopped shorter.
There are some that I’m keeping. Just in case. There’s a VO rando bar, a Salsa Cowbell, and a FSA Metropolis. But that’s it. The bikes all have bars that work pretty well, and the only thing I’d really do is my somewhat-annual swap between drops and the northroads that I have on the Soma right now. The fattie is happy with a Soma Clarence. And the super-wide nearly-flat bar that came on the fattie is on the Madsen.
If anybody wants one of the bars I’m getting rid of, leave a comment and we can talk.
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