Monday, July 11, 2005

fresh tape...

started out planning to swap the tires on my road bike friday night. then while i was in the shop i picked up some bar tape since my last attempt at taping bars was pretty shoddy and needed to be re-done.

by the time i got home and pulled the old tape off i'd started thinking about tweaking the position of my bars and brake levers, and before i knew it i'd taken the bars off to swap them out for a pair i'd had in the parts box since i built my cyclocross bike a couple of years ago. the replacement bars had a shallower drops than the bars i was using and i thought they might give me a more comfortable position down in the drops.

turns out i was right about the bars, but the best part was the new tape - just plain black cinelli cork, but for the first time it didn't look like the job was done by a blindfolded monkey... nice consistent overlap, smooth, no bludges or loose spots on the bends, and nice tidy ends that didn't need a yard of electrical tape to hold them down.

2 comments:

Matt Donahue said...

funny- I'm planning on working on my bar tape tonight! there are big gaps on the outside corners of my bars where my hands have pushed the tape apart.

I've never done this before- should be an adventure, and hopefully not resemble the work of a blind monkey.

joe said...

no, the first time will probably look like a blind drunk monkey... :)