Someone on the on-one forum asked about the Midge bars on my cross bike (really feel like a fraud since I don’t race cross, what else can I call it??) and how they compared to WTB dirt drops.

my response:

I’ve never ridden with the WTBs but believe they’re very similar to my usual bar (Specialized Rock Combo) made by Nitto.

I’ve just come back from a week away where I did quite a bit of riding and unfortunately, I have to say I didn’t really like the Midge bars. I’ve read nothing but good things about theses bars so have to conclude that they’re just different from what I’m used to. They’re a good bit wider accross the tops than my normal flares which I quite liked. The flare seemed to be a lot flatter which put my levers in a much more horizontal position which I didn’t much like. The drop itself is pretty shallow which I kinda liked. The major downside for me was that the bars don’t come back at me enough. The final section, just doesn’t seem long enough. I’m used to dropping my hands vertically from sitting on the hoods onto the drop section, but with the Midge I felt I was having to drop my hands down and forward at the same time. I’m going to ride them for a while longer and at the same time my commuting bike still has a pair of the Specialized drops so I can do some more comparison.

…and here’s the problem…

this pic shows the midge bars…. now I can’t understand how I can feel that I can’t easily drop from my hoods to the drop section. Looking at that picture, the drops are way further back than the hoods.

this pic shows the position of the drop section on my bike relative to the lever….

How can I have a problem dropping to the drops??…..

mmm….looks like I have the bars rotated too far up/forward. I tried them swung lower when I was building the bike but they seemed too…er swung forward…

Me thinks that the problem is that swung forward, the hoods are too low, I think I need a higher (shorter?) stem and need to rotate the bars further forward. I’ll get on to that and repost back.

The weird thing is that I really want to like these bars. Not sure why, maybe it’s because I like the idea of On-One and I’d much rather support these guys than the big boys. Anyhoo, I’m going to stick with it…

Currently playing in iTunes: Won’t Be Coming Home by Golden Smog

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