unaleona

Hey now! That sounds awfully pessimistic...

I'm a pretty stubborn person, so I'm going to work on this for a while at least. I think some of it is also just readjusting my understanding of riding a bike to get comfortable with this pretty drastically different position. I also want to point out that it's not that I've developed some aversion to upright bikes, it's just that there are serious hills around here, including on my daily commute and I've found the positioning on this bike is making a huge difference in being able to get to the top without feeling like I'm about to keel over. The wider gear range helps too, of course, but I just don't think that for my range of daily city riding it makes sense to be in a fully upright position like those European bikes you are talking about.

Update: I took the bike back to the shop last night, and they tightened all the cables (shifter and brake) as they said they had stretched since they were all brand new. They also changed the brake pads, and admitted that they should have changed them before selling it but hadn't noticed that they were dried out because they still looked fine. They confirmed that the levers that are on there are the "compact ones", Origin8 but I guess really just the same as Tektros. They didn't think that the issue would be particularly resolved by switching to dual pivot brakes, I think because they confirmed that the brakes were stopping to their satisfaction. I decided to test it out a bit further with their adjustments before switching, though they did say that if I wanted to switch to dual pivots they would install them for me at cost. They readjusted the brakes first so that they were very close to the wheels, but as someone (I think Tom) mentioned earlier, this actually made it worse because I couldn't pull the shifters back much distance at all from the hoods, so they moved them back slightly.

It does feel better now, but coming to a full stop from the hood still hurts my hands. It feels like in order to get enough leverage I have to contort my hands around and squeeze as hard as I can. I have started to experiment with braking from the drops, which I'd been nervous about, and I do have one or two finger braking from there, even on the downhill. That's helpful for me to know that it's an angle thing and not a braking power thing, but the problem doesn't feel totally solved. Something I'm hoping to try is asking another lady who is comfortable on a drop bar bike to ride mine and let me know if she feels like the braking from the hoods is comparable, and it's just an angle/strength issue, or if she has an easier time on her setup. The helpful guys at the shop have much bigger hands than I do, and I think it's hard for them to tell how difficult it is for me to brake! I'm starting to wonder if I'll need to use the hoods to slow down, the drops for braking on descents, and install cross levers for short stops.

And then Tom, in answer to your question, the answer is well, yes and and no. In theory, I am interested in learning to do the work myself, particularly to save money in the long run. The local bike clinic is starting up operations again this week after the winter break, and there are several LBS that have basic maintenance classes nearly every week. On the other hand, right now I don't own any tools besides one wrench and a tire lever, and I've barely got any experience. So I worry that in the process of trying to adjust this bike to my needs, I'd spend more money getting the tools I need and messing things up, or installing the brake properly and messing up the cable tension of the shifters in the process, etc. I'm a bit torn.

I did know that my front brake is my left hand and my back brake is my right hand but I hadn't really thought about how that affects where I should be putting the most pressure when braking until they were discussing that at the shop last night. I'm trying to start playing around with using the front brake more. Even if I haven't learned to do my own repairs yet, I've certainly been learning a ton about bikes and riding on here.