Bike Noob

Because I'm Always Learning Something New

Wrapping Bars – Fun and Frustrating

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This afternoon, I put my bike on the workstand and remounted the handlebar. Why the bar was off in the first place is a whole other topic, and I’ll probably post on it next week, when that saga comes to an end — I hope.

Anyhoo, I got the bar positioned the way I want it, then got the brake levers back on.  I even rode the bike around the block to make sure the levers were just where I was most comfortable with them.

Back in the garage, it was time to do one of my most favorite bike maintenance activities — wrapping new bar tape.

Freshly wrapped. Looks pretty good -- but wait. (Notice the leftover tape dangling from the shift cable?)

Why fun? Well, if you’ve never tried it, take a shot and see for yourself. With a little bit of care and patience, your bike can assume a whole new character in a matter of minutes. Or, you can do as I did, and use the same old black tape. I think it gives my bike a slightly understated look, and that’s fine with me.

There’s only one problem with wrapping tape: starting and stopping. Okay, two.

To start, you leave a bit of tape hanging down at the end of the handlebar. Then you have to make sure you pull the tape taut while wrapping it, or you’ll get gaps in the wrap — and we can’t have that.

Eventually, you get to the point where you want to stop, and here’s where one of my continuing bar wrapping problems crops up. I see all these pictures of nice bikes with one wrap of contrasting color tape to seal the wrap job. When you buy bar tape, you get a short length of the end tape — maybe it has the manufacturer’s logo on it, maybe not. But it’s all of three or four inches long, and only a half inch wide.

But the bar tape itself is wider than that. So one wrap of the contrasting tape won’t cover the whole end of the bar tape, and you get a square-edged corner sticking out from under. I don’t like the feel of that.

So I do it the Bike Noob way. I use black electrician’s tape to seal the job, and I cover the entire width of the bar tape, plus some.

At least it's a comfy place to rest my hand.

This is one of the reasons I prefer black bar tape. My electrician’s tape overdose is not so obvious to the casual observer.

Once I’ve overdone the electrician’s tape, it’s time to go back to the beginning. The length of tape left hanging from the bar end gets pushed into the bar, and kept in place with a bar end plug.  Sounds easy, but mine always comes out like this:

Lumpy on the left, lumpy on the right. Help!

No set of instructions on bar taping clearly explains how to cleanly get all the tape into the bar end and plug it without leaving unsightly lumps. Anybody got any pointers?  I’d love to hear ’em. In another week or so, I’ll be replacing the handlebar, so I’ll be going through the whole process all over again, and I’d sure like to get a clean looking end.

The Bontrager Inform Saddle — Revisited

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Guest poster Jeff Hemmel updates his review of the Bontrager Inform saddle — and likes it.

Regular readers may recall that last year I posted a review of the Bontrager InForm RL saddle, a relatively new design that had been getting a lot of attention due not only to Bontrager’s “size-to-fit” concept, but also designer’s choice to forego a cutout in favor of what they considered proper weight distribution to combat numbness.

Though I was never a gushing fan of the saddle, I was pretty happy with it overall…at least for several months. Then, for reasons that eluded me, I started to get that dreaded numbness. No, it never lasted after I got off the bike thankfully, but it got to be a real pain — literally and figuratively — during nearly every ride. By summer, I was finding it really annoying, and wondering if the seat’s foam had somehow broken down.

I asked Trek about it and they asked the obvious questions: had I changed my position, etc. Each time I analyzed the situation I couldn’t think of a single thing I had changed. Not my position, not my brand of shorts, nothing. I started to just think the saddle wasn’t that hot after all, and began researching alternatives.

A funny thing, however, happened over the winter. Here in Florida, it was one of the coldest in history, and as a result I did a lot of riding bundled up in far more clothing than I normally would. And somewhere in the midst of those cold, windy rides, I began to notice something. The numbness was subsiding. Ultimately, it went away for the most part. And that relative comfort has continued into the spring.

Like an on-again, off-again relationship, my saddle and I are once again an item.

Why the change of heart? At first I had no idea. But after analyzing things for a while, I think I found the answer. And I think part of it is the result of all that cold-weather riding in tights.

No, it wasn’t more padding, or a different chamois placement, or anything like that. I continue to wear my regular shorts, pulling on chamois-less Pearl Izumi tights over them. Those tights, however, are made of a more slippery material than my shorts. As a result, I found myself sliding around a little more in my seat. And what I discovered was that I was ultimately settling into a position a little further back of where I had been riding as of late — a position that spread more of my weight on my sit bones at a wider portion of the seat.

Why, or how, had I moved forward? I have no idea. But without any big conscious effort, I was now moving back a fraction more…and finding that riding could once again be a pleasurable experience.

Yes, I occasionally force myself to scoot my butt back just a little on the seat, but for the most part my body has now just adapted to this new position.

Long story short? I once again think the InForm saddle is worth my money, and I’m in no rush to replace it. I also have a fresh appreciation for that advice you so often hear about saddles — they need to support your weight on your sit bones, those two bony parts you feel when you sit on a flat, hard surface, and not on the perineum, that area of soft tissues between your legs that house all those nerves and arteries that you need for other, more important things.

I still think people should try different saddles to see which fit them best, and yes, I think a professional bike fitting is a great idea for any serious cyclist. But if you’re just not happy with your saddle, you might want to move around on it a little bit before you go shopping for a new one.

In other words, you might want to put a little work into your current relationship…before it leads to a pricey divorce.

Kneesavers

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It’s fascinating what you can learn from the cycling community.

Last week, I was battling a painful bout of gout in my left knee. I couldn’t bend the knee without it hurting, and I walked with a pronounced limp.

That’s all in the past now. A steroid injection into the knee and some time on the bike has done wonders. I’m walking normally again. The more time I ride, the better the knee feels.

But while I was laid up, I got lots of interesting advice. One item didn’t apply to my gout, but it’s interesting enough that I’m going to look into it anyway. It’s called the Kneesaver.

The idea behind the Kneesaver is simple. It’s an extension to the pedal axle, just 20, 25 or 30 mm long. The company says that added width to the pedal (what it calls the “Q factor”) can reduce or eliminate pain in the hip, knee, ankle or foot.

The Kneesavers web site (www.kneesaver.net) has testimonials from satisfied users, but I put more stock in the unsolicited testimonials from riders in my club whose experience I respect.

One said he bought them to help alleviate pain in his hip that came on after a crash.  Not only did the pain go away, he said, but his knees felt younger, too (he’s in his upper 50s). When he started riding his “rain bike” during colder winter weather, the hip pain came back. He moved the Kneesavers over to his rain bike, and the pain went away. “A wider stance on the pedals will more closely approximate your ‘at rest’ standing position and that’s where you will have the most comfortable knee rotation,” he said.  “It’s an old guy thing.” He was so happy with his experience that he’s buying another set for his wife.

Lending even more credibility to the worth of Kneesavers is a comment from another club member, who happens to be a physician. He also complained of hip pain after long bike rides. “What put me onto it was I noticed that long rides on our tandem didn’t give me this problem,” he said, “so when I checked I discovered that the Q on the tandem was an estimated 30% wider–because they use a MTB crankset (MTB cranksets have a significantly wider Q). When I measured my ‘standing Q’ it was 10cm wider than my road bike, so I increased it the minimum.”

One thing to watch for if using pedal extenders is the increased possibility of “pedal strike” in corners. You can’t lean the bike as far without the pedal hitting the ground. But since we’re supposed to corner with the inside pedal up, that shouldn’t be a problem.

This post is not to be considered an endorsement for Kneesavers. I haven’t tried them yet.  But I’m not getting any younger, and anything that keeps me going in comfort is worth a look.

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