Tweaking the mlcm
The positions the mustache bars didn’t give me – the flats and the ramps – turned out to be more important than I thought, and after 150 miles of short loops (12-30 miles) with my hands aching after every one I’d had enough. It’s possible that raising the bars would make the mustache bars work better (and that’s certainly what I’m going to try when I build up the gaspipe frame (into what, I’m not sure. A fixed-gear hub would be a hilarious experiment if I didn’t end up breaking half the bones in my body the first time I forgot the rule of you move == you pedal)) but I’ve got the steer tube on my fork cut down to just the right height for rando bars, so I’d need to buy a less tilted stem if I wanted to put the bars higher.
So I waved goodbye to the mustache bars and said hello to a pair of Origin-8 Gary bars, which I installed this afternoon. They’re nice and wide (so I don’t give up the tremendous leverage that the mustache bars have when I’m in the drops) but they’ve got flats and ramps that are actually sized to fit my hands.
I decided to experiment a bit with the handlebar tape; I bought a couple of rolls of Velox cloth tape and wrapped the bars with it, but I first took an old inner tube, cut it into strips, and prewrapped the bars with them. And then I tied the velox tape down with twine and shellacked it into oblivion.
We’ll see how this one works.