Two Wheel Blogs

Look what showed up today!

Much to my surprise my old Jones bars showed up today with a new set of shims, fresh stickers, and new plugs in the bar ends. The old stickers got all scratched up long ago, and the bar plugs fell out during crash events over the past few years. Yes these bars were abused well, so I sent them home to Jeff for a little inspection and such. While they were there, I guess he decided to clean them up a bit.

They look like new bars.

I must admit, I do not know what I am going to do with them as I am enjoying my more conventional straight bar on my bike at the moment. Perhaps I will re-build the Surly with these, some leather bar tape, and a fixed gear? That could be fun for commuting and some trail rides.

Trail riding on a fixed gear is known as "scorching" over the pond. It is something I have wanted to try for a long time now. I just have to come up with a few more parts for this build....

So anyway, back to the bars...This experience has been pretty good. I have nothing against the big guys who contract work from a factory (or have their own factories), such as Specialized, Trek, etc., but dealing with these custom builders that make the stuff they sell (personally) is a neat experience. I feel like parts from custom builders have a little more "soul". I don't know, may be BigBrandX employs people to design/build/package/ship parts that really love their work and are totally into the same things as the end users...but somehow I doubt that is the case.