Drop Bar Adventure, Part III

All that’s left now is to go for a ride and try it (them) out. My bike is finished, everything is installed, or attached, or connected, or whatever adjective is appropriate, and it is sitting in my garage just waiting for my next chance to ride it.

Yes, you may think I am crazy, but I now have drop (or, shall we say, road-style) handlebars on my mountain bike. Except I think I should stop calling it a mountain bike. It is not — and never has been — used as a mountain bike is supposed to be used; it has always been ridden on the road, and now, with a racing-style saddle, a rigid fork, and drop handlebars, it will not — and probably cannot — be ridden as a mountain bike. This bike is used for road riding, it just unfortunately has a mountain bike frame and 26-inch wheels.

So, the bars are on, the shifters are on, the bar tape (I went with this tape in apple green from Fi’zi:k; when it’s time for new tape, I’ll probably pay the money and get some nice Brooks bar tape, probably in turquoise) is on, I got a new rear derailleur, and everything is working right. Well, almost. I’ve lost my granny gear. The front mech doesn’t quite work right with the new shifters, and so even though the front shifter says “triple”, it only works as a double, meaning that I can only use my big and middle rings. It’s no big loss, however, as I hardly ever used the small ring anyways. There isn’t much difference between the middle ring and big cog (32×32) combo and the small ring and and the second-biggest cog (22×28), so I only ever used my small ring when the 32×32 wasn’t low enough. So even though my bike has gone from 24 gears to 16 gears, I am only effectively losing one gear and I rarely used that gear anyways.

So now all that’s left is to go out for a ride and try it out. Here’s hoping (wife, children, and free time allowing) that that will be soon. In the meantime, below for your perusal is a picture of how my bike looks now.