It’s a bit moist around these parts at the moment, so this morning I chose a be-fendered bike for my ride:
But before heading out I figured I’d address my bar tape situation:
While I generally like the feel of cork tape, I felt the Homer could use something more befitting its distinguished personality and lugged sensibility. Also, this particular cork tape is recycled–I think I’ve re-used it three times at this point–and it’s pretty ragged as a result. (This is why there’s so much electrical tape on it.) So I figured I’d Riv it up a little with some Newbaum’s:
Despite being a Rivendell owner since March of 2020, I’d never actually wrapped a bar with Newbaum’s myself, which is sort of like being an old-timey gentleman who’s never waxed his own moustache:
However, I’m an old hand at wrapping drop bars, and I also planned to wrap the Newbaum’s over the tape that was already on there. Not only would this save time, but I’d also get to enjoy the best of both worlds: the look and feel of the cotton cloth, and the extra girth and cushioning of the cork. All in, I figured this couldn’t possibly take more than 10 or 15 minutes, especially since I wasn’t planning to shellac it or wrap it in twine or treat it with rendered beaver fat or whatever else the real cloth tape aficionados do to it. So I opened the package and got to work:
Unwrapping the tape, the first thing that surprised me was that the Newbaum’s has an adhesive backing, and a pretty sticky one at that. No doubt everyone else in the world already knows this, as would I if I’d taken two seconds to read about it, but for some reason I just assumed it was plain old cloth and that if you wanted adhesive you had to treat it with rendered beaver fat or something. The second thing I learned was that, unlike cork tape, if you’re not careful the Newbaum’s easily folds over on itself and gets stuck to its own rather tacky adhesive backing, which if you’re an idiot who’s in a big hurry to head out for a ride means you’re soon looking at a situation like this:
At every turn it seemed like I managed to get the tape tangled up either in itself or else around some part of the bicycle:
So I’d untangle it, only for it to quickly get tangled again in some way I didn’t think was possible:
It was like the zipper scene in “There’s Something About Mary:”
Sorry.
Clearly instead of working right off the giant roll I should have figured out how much tape I’d need and cut it first, then wrapped the bars more carefully, peeling off the backing slowly as I went. But it was too late now, and in my haste I’d not only wound up with a great big knot but also started missing spots along the way:
Furthermore, this debacle was now cutting into my ride time, and so using a scissor I quite literally cut my losses and hoped I still had enough tape left to properly wrap the bars another day.
Pathetic. Absolutely pathetic.
With that now behind me, I headed out into a light drizzle:
“You know, the old cork tape’s really not so bad,” I tried to convince myself:
Speaking of bars, some riders argue that integrated shifting is one of the greatest technological advances of the modern era, and it’s certainly ideal for race bikes, but I’d say that strictly in terms of convenience a bar-end shifter is just as good:
And with a low-normal/RapidRise/whatever derailleur a gentle nudge with the palm is all it takes to downshift:
Though a bar-end shifter does require you to set your drop bars at a sensible height that allows you to comfortably use all the various hand positions including the drops, whereas 95% of road bike riders keep their hands on their brake hoods 95% of the time and the drops are only there for aesthetic reasons.
In any case it felt good to be back on a “normal” bike:
And as much as I enjoy riding the Y-Foil when I think about it while on the Homer it seems like some crazy lampshade I put on my head when I got drunk at a party:
Oh, and further to a recent post, I’ve confirmed that the Y-Foil was in fact designed to be “suspension ready:”
[PDF]
It truly is the anti-Rivendell, right down to the fact that the absence of a seat tube means your water bottle gets splattered with road grit, whereas the Homer allows you to use fenders and keep both your pendulous saddle bag and your rear suspension system (by which I mean the leather saddle) nice and clean:
It’s truly a bike for all seasons.