I'm hoping that's sarcasm, coz that sounds awful.

Tell ya a story. About 8 years ago I used to have a stunningly beautiful bike - A Schwinn Paramount Titanium. It was a gorgeous bike - candy crimson in the front and brushed Ti in the rear. The ride feel of that bike was really nice - like steel except better I got it for a song becasue I was doing some work for Schwinn Japan at the time and managed to do a contra deal.
However, it handled like poo. It had a 74.5 degree head angle and a 72.5 degree seat angle and short stays. I could never get comfortable on it. And I tried too. Put in well over 3000kms on it and just didn't like it. Felt like I was more 'on' the bike rather than 'in' the bike, and the faster you went the worse it got.

So I took a hiatus from the road until I decided to do my Tephra (The orange one in the gallery.) Did lots of homework about geomtery and fit, and went and got fitted up by Kennedy. He got me fitted and I took his suggestions about geometry, took what I thought was valid and discarded the rest and combined that with what I had learned from my independant research.

So what i ended up with is a bike like no other. 73 degree head, 71.5 degree seat. 425mm stays. 605 top tube. No other off-the-peg bike comes close, and it handles really nicely. The faster you go, the better it gets.

Now, for my next bike I'm taking what I've learned from that and modifying it slightly, as well as trying a few different things to see how that affects handling.

- Going from 73 degree head angle to 72.5
- Going from 48mm rake fork to 50mm
- Stays from 425 to 415
- Top tube from 605 to 595, stem from 120 to 130.

I think those changes will make for better slower speed handling without changing it's high speed characteristics. I'm also keen to see how this steering geometry compares to previous and how a slightly more rearward weight bias effects handling.

So basically, you'll never see me on anything with any angles approaching 74-75 degrees. Maybe a track bike if I ever built one, but never on the road.

Being 6ft 3in and 95kgs throws some factors into the mix that you just don't get when you're 5ft 10 and 70kg.

Or shorter