Originally Posted by
schoolboy2
When I first retired in 2018, I started a cross country tour from Boston to my home in Santa Rosa, CA. Just before I left, I changed my front bars from the Surly standard drop bar to a Jones H-Bar. This proved to be a big mistake for me. While many others use and love the Jones H-Bar, they caused numbness in my hands that became more severe as the days and miles passes. I finally had to suspend my ride in Dayton, OH as I could no longer make my hands work well enough to sign my name, let alone fix a flat or any other simple maintenance. I spent the rest of that summer off the bike waiting for the feeling to return to my hands. In the fall, when my hands worked again, I changed everything back to drop bars. No more hand numbness from riding.
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Never heard of a more upright bar causing a hand numbness problem like that. Am glad you got it sorted out.
I sometimes get a numb left arm after several hours on the bike, but i attribute that to a crash, dislocated shoulder and the two surgeries that followed. Feeling comes back within minutes after getting off the bike with no long term problems. I use drop bars.