Thanks much to everyone who responded. I've read all the replies---twice---and here are my thoughts:
1. A common theme is to try a long stem to get more extension. I'll try that. I don't think it'll help, but it's an easy experiment and I don't trust my expectations enough to *not* try it. The stem on the bike now is 100mm and I have a 120mm available, so I'll swap them. BTW, this is why I like the threadless stem+riser setup so much; it's not as sleek, but I don't have to disassemble anything but the stem itself to change it out. 2. Raise or lower the bars. Again, raising is easy and I'll try it. I think it'll put me too much in the sit-up-and-beg position, which I don't think I'll like, but again (again!), I don't completely trust my expectations and it's easy to try. I don't have enough room to lower them by more than a few millimeters, and flipping the Albas would be almost like trying another kind of bar, which leads me to..... 3. Try different upright bars. I have a Bosco and an Albastache that I could try, but I'm not sure I'm motivated enough to do it even though I have the bars. The Bosco would put me higher and further back; the former change I'll have mimicked by raising the Albas, and the latter change is the opposite of swapping to a longer stem to get more reach. It's that sit-up-and-beg thing again. I won't rule out trying the Albastache, mainly because I want to try them on *something* and here's my chance, but I think I'd be stretched way out unless I went with a shorter stem....but I might try it to be sure. As much as I'd like to like the Cheviot with uprights, swapping bars could lead down a rabbit hole of trial-and-error. I won't rule it out if I learn something from #1 and #2 that leads me to believe that a certain bar would work, but I'm not inclined to go to exhaustive means to Find the Right Setup. I'm happy with my Sams and my other bikes with drops, and was curious about upright-bar setups in general and the Cheviot specifically, but I might just be in the camp of "don't like 'em" and will want to cut my losses after trying a few reasonably easy solutions. 4. Try drop bars. No one mentioned this option, but it's something I've considered. As it's set up now, the reach to the center of the stem clamp is 1.5 cm longer than that on my Sams with Noodles, so I could replicate the Sam's reach on my Cheviot by replacing the 100mm stem with an 80mm stem. Then what would I have, if not a Sam with longer chain stays and a stepover option that I don't use now anyway (old habits are hard to break)? But I'm curious enough that I might try it to see. It would let me assess the Cheviot as the only variable. That's it for now. Again, thanks for everyone who weighed in. If I learn anything relevant that might help others then I'll add another entry to this string. -- 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.
