So I went through this entire odyssey after I discovered that Meg’s handlebar/stem combination wasn’t working well for me and wasn’t going to be easy to replace. I looked for stems that would work and found almost nothing, and I couldn’t figure out whether any non-31.8 handlebars would work. I think the odyssey is finally over, at least for a while.

When I went to Mike’s Bikes tonight, I talked to a guy about searching first and he tried to find me a stem, but came up with nothing. So I went back to the repair guys to talk about moving the levers again, and they finally explained that the reason they were worried about moving the levers and rotating the bars was that I might not be able to reach the brake levers from the hand position on the drops.

I demonstrated to them that I already can’t do that, so to please go ahead and make the change if that was their only concern!

I didn’t even know it was possible to do that — my hands just aren’t large enough; I can’t do it effectively on my road bike either. If want to brake I put my hands either forward into the furthest-front part of the drops or I come up to the hoods.

Now that my bars have been rotated, the very bottom of the drops is at a bit of an angle and isn’t quite so comfortable to use, but given the small amount of time I spend in the drops compared to the time I spend up top, it’s a tiny loss. The top feels very much like my road bike bars and is so much more comfortable it’s almost unbelievable.

Thank heaven for Mike’s Bikes and service guys who actually are patient and take the time to talk to you and explain their perspective!

While there I also picked up two new pairs of gloves that I hope will be much more comfortable than my current Novara ones, and which were, surprisingly, no more expensive. I also got another jersey identical to my favorite blue one that I got last year (someday I’ll have someone take a picture of me in those on my bike and put in on my W2W page and you’ll see what I mean) which I love and which was 40% off! I couldn’t believe they had some left over. They also have some Specialized saddles that look interesting which I may look into for my road bike because I think that saddle is too wide, and some road bike fenders that use clip attachments to the rear triangle instead of going under the brake, so I’ll be back for at least one pair of those come winter.