I'm right there with you, Dave. My Hillborne came with Albatross bars and I never warmed up to them. My old Bianchi was the swan song for drop bars for me. The more upright riding is great for urban riding and as I've been getting older I was getting a little neck pain from drops. I finally bit the bullet and dropped about $300 on a set of Albastache bars, brake levers and stem. Absolutely love them! They still provide the fast-ish-feeling lean that I missed from the drops but still enabled me to get a bit more upright when I wanted a new body position. Lots of others say how they just can't get used to Albastache or get hand pain from them but I feel the same about Albatross. The past year I've had to go back the Albatross bars because of a shoulder ailment and, although it is a very nice set up (Paul levers and thumbies and beautiful Brooks slender grips), I desperately miss the Albastache. As soon as I get the time to convert back, I will. You may want to try a set. They are in between, but in a good way. They feel somewhere between Albatross, Dirt Drops and straight bars to me.
John On Sunday, January 21, 2018 at 12:16:13 PM UTC-8, Dave Small wrote: > > Hi all, > > As I read more and more testimonials from people about how awesome their > switch was to upright handlebars, I wanted to try 'em. I like drop bars as > long as they're saddle-height or higher, but there's a semi-conscious part > of me that feels the teensiest-bit compelled to push drop-bar bikes just a > little, and sometimes I want to just putz along and enjoy the scenery, and > not even consider my speed or trip time. Plus, as I get older I thought > that uprights may be in my future anyway, so why not give 'em a shot now? > > So, I took a Velo-Orange Polyvalent and replaced the drop bars with > porteur bars. It's okay, but I feel like I'm kinda caught between a > forward lean and sitting upright, in a no-man's land of Tweenerville. So > maybe this isn't the right bike on which to test upright bars, I thought, > so I converted a V-O Campeur from drop bars to V-O Left Bank bars. Nope, I > thought, not fond of this. But those Albatross bars that everyone thinks > is the bees knees?---let's try *those* on the Campeur! It was better, > and I thought it might actually be fine, but the more I rode it the less I > liked it, so I swapped the bars back to drop and was reminded of what a > great bike the Campeur is---with drops. > > Maybe those are the wrong bikes for uprights, I though, so I bought a > Cheviot and set it up with Albatross bars, 'cause the Cheviot was > *designed* for Albatross bars and Albas are *the best*, right? Right? > Everyone says so, so it must be true. As I was engaging in this > experiment I thought to myself that would be the Gold Standard of > Upright-Bar Setups, and if I don't like this then I must not like upright > bars---but meanwhile I was sure it'd be *good* because everyone says it > is. > > I don't like it. A couple of days ago I took it out for what I'd intended > to be a 13-mile trial ride to see how things went at that relatively short > distance, and ended up going 24 miles. That's a typical ride for me on a > drop-bar bike, and know how I feel when I get home. On the Cheviot I felt > slow and never quite comfortable in a upright position, with the most > natural feeling coming when I was stretched out (relatively speaking) and > holding onto the bends that are furtherest toward the front. But that's > close to where the bends would be on a drop-bar bike, so in essence I was > mimicking the position I'd be in on such a bike, and wasn't comfortable in > the position in which the Albas were designed to put me. Also, my hands > got kinda numb and didn't work well; toward the end of the ride I tried to > wave a car through an intersection ahead of me by waving my fingers, and > they wouldn't bend. I went a longer distance than I'd initially planned to > on that ride because I thought maybe I needed more time or distance to > acclimate to the Albas, but instead of things feeling better they felt > worse as the ride progressed. > > With that background, I have 2 questions for the group: > > 1. Has anyone else experienced something similar and then fixed it, for > example by raising or lowering the bars or the angle of the bars or > changing the stem extension? There was a recent thread that indicated not > everyone likes upright bars (which I read only after I'd built up the > Cheviot), but it didn't get to my specific question about whether someone > could convert from nonliker to liker of uprights by adjusting 'em. > > 2. Has anyone used drop bars on a Cheviot? I know they're not designed > for drops, but given that I liked the extended position the best, I'm > thinking that drops might be more suitable for me than uprights. And > follow-up question: Would drops on a Cheviot make it essentially a mixte > Sam Hillborne but with longer chain stays? I'm thinking yes, and I don't > need to duplicate the 2 Sams I already have. > > Thanks in advance for any input on this. I know I could continue to play > with set-ups and hope to stumble across a solution, but I'm tired of that > and about ready to give up on the Cheviot and am hoping to find a solution > more efficiently than trial and error, if one exists. If I can't get to > liking the Cheviot then I'm gonna consider that I'm in the > don't-care-for-uprights camp, but first wanted to eliminate the possibility > that there's a simple solution I'm just not seeing. > > Dave > > > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
