Originally Posted by jeffpoulin

Maybe I should put this in the confessions thread, but my main commuter is a flat bar road bike (a 2008 Trek 7.7FX). I like it and after 3 years of commuting about 200 miles/week, I'm still not tempted to convert it to drop bars. It's lighter and slightly faster than my drop bar touring bike which is my alternate commuter. However, it wasn't like that out of the box. Brand new, it was actually slower than my touring bike due to poor aerodynamics. I did 3 things to improve this: (1) cut the handlebars down from 58cm to 50cm. (2) installed bar ends for different hand positions and a more "bullhorn" shape, (3) I changed the stem to something slightly longer and inverted it so it was at -6 degrees instead of +6. I measured various positions on the bike and it's slightly less upright than my touring bike. Slightly faster too. Still just as comfortable for me, and still fun to ride.