re: bar tape, when I rode drop bar bikes (long long ago and far far away), I always liked the black cloth sticky tape stuff that looked like what we used to call 'friction tape', but this stuff appears to have gone away, as when I went looking for tape for a road bike I fixed up for my son, the bike shops looked at me like an alien when I asked about it. I think it was french or italian. Also I discovered you wrap them the other way around now. We used to start in the middle and work down to the ends.

I ended up with some foam stuff that made a nice cushy wrap.



(hey, it was scrounge this vintage trek and fix it up, or let my kid take my 1975 Motobecane Grand Record with all its vintage campy bits to college).