(or confessions of a handlebar junky)

I did some work over the weekend to my Surly Ogre. It is my touring/backpacking/gravel bike that I tend to put the most miles in on. So getting everything dialed in so that it is comfortable, but still capable, is very important. Comfort is all about positioning. And positioning is all about alignment.

Putting bigger miles on either a bicycle or a motorcycle ends up being about endurance and the ability to move around a bit. Having only one comfortable position puts you in jeopardy of that position getting uncomfortable over many miles, and I can guarantee you it will.

Positioning in life is much the same way. We need to continually position ourselves to live our best life. One position only remains comfortable for a period of time. And even when it last a long time we can become to sedate in that comfort and fool ourselves into thinking of it as security.

Which does not really exist. Everything, and I mean everything, in this life is transient.

Now, on my bicycles I find that I have become somewhat of a handlebar junky. I have tried so many different ones over the years. Even when I find one that I like, after a while, I often realize that I liked it for the wrong reasons. Maybe I liked the looks of it, but over the miles what started out as comfortable, in reality is not. You have to put miles on things like handlebars, saddles and pedals to know if they really work for you. You have to walk some miles in life too to decide what is comfortable and what works.

As such, I have a whole rack of different handlebars on a shelf in my garage. I may sell some of them soon, but as sure as I do I will want to go back and try them again. Building different bikes up from the frame is a lot of fun. I have revamped bikes multiple times into different configurations to best suit my riding style at the time.

Here too is where life comes into play. My life style, like my riding style, has changed over the years. If you have been around any substantial length of time I bet yours has as well. Single, is different than married, different than with kids, different than with a given job, pay level, commute, city….the list goes on and on. I always told my kids to position yourself so that you travel light. Never weigh yourself down with so much (stuff, debt, baggage) that you cannot pivot when life ask you to, or demands you must. You have no idea what you might miss if you do.

So while writing this, I ended up with another handlebar….and frame. Now the bike I was building out of an old Trek Rig is on the back burner for a while. Meantime, I am building up a Surly Krampus to be a full ridged trail, single track and gravel bike.The bar I got for the Rig will work well on the Krampus as well. Additionally, I will probably be on the hunt for a suspension fork to be able to swap out with the rigid fork, which will most likely draw me back to running a Diety flat bar I have in my stash for that setup.

Again, all of these things let me position myself for different types of terrain and different riding styles.

In life, or on a bike, positioning is really everything. The more we add to it the less we are able to position our selves to pivot quickly. Everything in life, as a good friend often says, is for a reason, a season or a lifetime.

Pedal on that.