tales of a successful experiment ⁽⁴⁾

When you're the mean bastard who tortures his wrists on top of mountain bikes without suspension like I do, the least you can do is let your wrists hold onto the bars in the most natural way possible, so that they're not angled or twisted in any way. Alt bars with tons of sweep are the solution. I went from Answer bars with a 20° sweep to Jones with a 45° back sweep and my wrists have been happy ever since. Ritchey now has an alternative available with a bit less sweep. The Kyote with 27.5°. At the same time, the Kyote is considerably wider than a Jones H-Bar. 800mm versus 710mm. When I saw it on Bike24 and saw the price tag (25 EUR), I had to get one. Due to the different shapes, I also needed a new stem in order to use the Kyote. I went from a 100mm long stem with the Jones H-Bar to a 40mm stem for the Ritchey Kyote.

Although that statement seems fitting, I'm not talking about age here. In the second installment of Tales Of A Successful Experiment these numbers reflect where I've landed with handlebars in over thirty years of mountain biking. If you started in this sport in the 80ies, your first mountain bike had a flat bar with some back sweep. As you got into the 90ies the handlebars of your XC bike got narrower. To get better leverage while climbing, you added bar ends. Chances are high these were sporting big Onza logos; maybe they were 3D purple too. As time moved on, handlebars grew wider and started to rise. Somehow, the mountain bike community collectively decided that it was uncool to combine a riser bar with bar ends and that was the end of those handlebar extensions unless your name was Fred. Fast-forward to the turn of the century to the arrival of 29-inch wheels. The larger wheels moved the whole cockpit upwards and out of necessity, the flat bar returned.

I started cycling in the mid-80s when the first mountain bikes arrived at the local bike stores. I had just begun my apprenticeship and a few work colleagues and I spent our small apprentice salary on these new 18-speed fat-tire bikes. We rode them to work and to our summer hangouts at the lake and soon enough discovered the trails around and above Biel. It didn't take long and I was hooked. After a couple of years, 1992 to be precise, I decided to start road cycling as well. My LBS was the Trek dealer at the time and I placed an order for a black Trek 5200 OCLV road bike. The bike was my primary road bike for many years, moved with me to California where it became my commuter bike after a couple of years.

I've been running oval Rotor and Garbaruk chainrings on my road and gravel bikes for years, but have not used any on my single-speed or fat bike even though the benefits of oval rings would be particularly advantageous on these two bikes. On my FatBike I've dialed the chain line to an optimum with a round 28T Wolftooth chainring. Due to a lack of chain stay clearance an oval ring would not fit without me increasing the chain line. Until now, my single-speed was equipped with a round 34T titanium chainring for technical reasons also. My favorite MTB crankset - Rotor's Rex 1.2 - had a 5-bolt, 110 BCD spider. The smallest oval ring for that bolt circle diameter is a 36T - too large for a SingleSpeed in mountainous terrain - I don't have quite that power. This all changed now because Rotor expanded their direct-mount chainring options to the Rex line of cranks.