The Bars

Continuing the current theme of tarting up the Jamis this is a shot of the bike with the Easton carbon fibre bars on.
I’m terrified they’re going to snap, but since I’m a slow cross country sort and the biggest thing I’ve done so far is to roll over some logs I’m assuming I’m so far inside their specs that things aren’t at risk. I’ve had a couple of decent crashes with them so far, well, slow but I did fall with some force each time. I just wish they looked more, well, carbon fibrey. They’ve got this finish on them which means you don’t see the weave.

Why carbon fibre? Well I bought a hard tail not realising that I probably should have got a duallie since what I’d like to do is ride some of the longer races (4, and 6 hours, and those 100km ones that are popping up). So the hardtail is pretty rough over the single track at times and the carbon fibre is a small effort to soften some of that trail chatter. The weight gain is pretty minor, the alloy bars that came off are pretty light anyway, so I don’t think that’s a particularly strong argument for carbon bars (particularly since the bike at this point still had the base shimano hubs and WTB rims it came with, and so on). But they look good, and they make me feel faster. Oh, and they’re very slight risers too which straightens up my position a bit which has helped as I learn the ropes.