Joe,
If, down the road a few years, life has given you so many aches and pains that the only way to keep riding is having your bars several inches above the saddle, will you just give up?

I finally decided it made no sense to collect great old English bikes I could only ride a few miles, while needing recumbents to go any distance. I spent quite a bit of time and money experimenting with different bars and stems and ended up with all my bars at least as high as those in the photo. In some cases I had to make a stem to get the position I wanted.

Now, despite a bad back, arthritic hands and damaged shoulders, I'm enjoying cycling more than ever before. If the sight of my immaculate Jack Taylor, with the bars 5" above a B-67 with big coil springs, irritates some moron, that's just icing on the cake.