It's August! Riding through the heat.

[north woods gal]

Sheila, my romance with the Jones bars was short lived. I found that the Jones bars have too much sweep for me to be comfortable. The Jones with its 45 degrees of sweep actually required me to bend my wrists from their natural position when reaching for the handlebars. That and I found that the actually H bar cross section was too short and narrow to use for alternate riding positions. Great idea, but just didn't wok for me. If you want one, be glad to let you have mine. Let me know.

On the other hand, I found the new Surly Moloku with its 34 degrees of sweep to be perfect, plus I can get some very useable positions for riding on the cross brace. It's now standard on all Surly flat bar touring bikes. Great design. I liked the Moloku so much I even added one to the old Pugsley. Unlike the Jones, the Moloku also works very well for my trail riding. I can ride my single track very well with it. The Jones was like trying to ride single track with a 50s cruiser bike. Hated it it for trail work.

The one disadvantage with the Moloku is the weight, if you're trying to count grams, because it is made of steel, not aluminum. Of course, if we Surly nuts were worried about counting grams, we wouldn't be riding Surly, anyway.

As for stems, I always have to go a touch shorter on standard traditional unisex bikes like a Surly. Right now, I'm using a Salsa Bend 2 with 23 degrees of sweep for a handlebar on my Krampus with a very short 45mm Race Face stem. Went that short, this summer, to keep me more upright while my neck healed, but need to go back to maybe a 60 or 65mm, now, to get me into optimum trail riding position. The medium Krampus came with a 70mm stem from the factory. Just a touch too long for my short torso. Unless I'm buying a WSD bike, my rule of thing on stem length is to subtract 10mm for stem length on more traditional bikes like the Surly. Most current high tech MTBs, like my Norco fatties, already come with very short stems, so not always an option for me.