Originally Posted by microcord

Thank you all for the advice. Particularly



Ulp! This sounds like the kind of thing I and my chums were repeatedly told to do forty-plus years ago -- whereupon most of us would make feeble pretences of doing it, while counting down the seconds till the end of the school day. But yes! I'll do it!

Yes, I suspect that my frame is small for me; but surely it's not so small that well-informed adjustments can't do a tolerably good job. Anyway, where I happen to be (Tokyo) is not a place where one has a choice of pretty good, reasonably priced frames or bikes my size; and though I'm tempted by made-to-measure frames and so on I'm definitely not going to pay a lot for something until/unless I'm pretty sure I have good reasons for knowing what I want.

I realize that brifters are easier to use and that my lack of them is probably a factor in the way I occasionally have to stop when an incline suddenly becomes steep, not being able to change down fast enough. (Well, it's probably 90% inattention and slow reaction times, 10% technology.) But I can live with this. What does irritate me is the accumulation of junk on, or very close to, the handlebar; I'm a bit tempted to switch to a little bag and rack close above the front mudguard -- something like uno cofrecito bag perhaps. However, I'm not rushing to buy different or new add-ons till the quasi-triangle of my own contact with the bike is improved.

For that purpose, I'm booked in for a fitting exactly one week from now. Today, I am an 11 stone apology; from next week, I hope to be on course to become two separate gorillas (3:25).