An earlier post mentioned that I’d gone in to iKon Cycles for a fitting and some parts. The parts have long since come in, and Adrian installed them just in time for me to hit the road during January Critical Mass with an old bike that feels very, very new, thanks to new handlebars, bar tape, and a new leather saddle.

Why the change? Comfort, really. My old handlebars, for example, had very round “drops", which work fine for people that don’t have my ginormous mitts. Whenever I climbed into the drops, my hands would completely envelop the bars, so I was often holding the handlebar so that it entered and exited my grip at 90 degree angles. This tired my hands out something fierce and Had To Change. These new bars have longer, flatter edges on the drops right where my hands will go, saving me from trying to fit that too-small curve in my too-large palm.

Since I knew the old drops weren’t going to be around forever, I experimented a bit with bar wrappings. First I tried just thin cotton twine, wrapped over and over around the handlebar. It looked very slick and felt wonderful, but it had no cushioning to it. After a dozen or so miles, my hands, in addition to trying to grab an uncomfortable shape, were getting beat about. My palms never got bruised, but it felt like they were after longer rides. I tried wrapping some strips of inner tube rubber under the cotton, but all that did was mess up the twine’s clean spiral shape.  With the new handlebars, I decided to bit the bullet and go with a commercial (and comfy) bar tape from Charge.

The biggest change for my bike and my riding was the saddle. As far as saddles go, a Raleigh subsidiary, Brooks, has been making top-notch leather saddles for well over a century now, and they’re pretty much the gold standard of butt-holding. There are a few others that are as good or almost as good (Cardiff, I hear, makes some quite nice knock-offs), but because my body geometry is weird, my seat has to be set pretty far back in order to keep undue strain off of my back and out of my knees. I’d be pushing the limits with a Brooks saddle, but Selle An-Atomica’s Titanico saddles are built to allow for more extreme positions, and from what I’ve heard, it’s as comfy as a Brooks, while featuring a more pronounced cut-out to guard against perineum pressure. So far, it’s been riding wonderfully.

I’ve even got a new set of pedals installed. No big deal, really; they’re pedals. The nice road pedals I had on earlier were too narrow for my feet, and I wanted something a little more stable to push off against, and so I grabbed a set of touring pedals – grippy and wide – from MKS, which are a knockoff of Campagnolo’s touring pedals of a few years ago. Along with the pedals, I picked up some “half clips", a simpler variant on the plastic or steel cages your foot slides into, and so far, they’ve been fun to ride and great at keeping my foot on the pedal.

I’ve still got a couple of things I want to add: a rack and fenders to make commuting easier and a fluted seatpost to complete my bike’s classic look, but the bike is already better prepared for the long LifeCycle ride than I am.