Originally Posted by
Witterings
I was just thinking about the best “Do It All” bike mainly for pleasure riding for a mix road and gravel paths with typical distances between 20 and up to 50 miles.
If you knock Mountain and Racing Bikes out as extremes on either end of the spectrum you’re really left with Hybrids or Gravel bikes in between.
If they both have comparable tyre clearance, gearing, brakes and weight, the only thing left that really separates them apart is one has drops and the other flat bars.
Interested to see generally whether people prefer flats or drops but even more so the reasoning behind your choice and if there is a far greater percentage in favour of one against the other.
Drop bars for hand positions and aero positioning when in a strong headwind; flat bars for riding upright in traffic. Take a page from the late great Sheldon Brown and use a threadless stem adapter (if you have a quill stem) and mount TWO stems on it. The lower one angles down and has the drop bars and the top stem angles up and has a cut-down straight bar. Sheldon used a quill stem for the upper handlebar.
https://sheldonbrown.com/org/thorn-index.html
Cheers