Originally Posted by sjanzeir

An evil combination of tiny hands, poor (or poorly trained) hand-eye coordination, and too much complexity concentrated at the tips of too few fingers.

In the 10 days or so that I had the 2016 Trek 1.2, the two times that I took it out were straight out of a Harold Lloyd flick. Later that same year, I thought I should give myself another chance with this whole brifter business, so I went over to my sporting goods place and tried out a Fuji Sportif around the shop floor, just to see if my newly acquired briftophobia was real. I was on the bike for about 15 seconds when I crashed into a rack full of soccer T-shirts, right after I caught myself shifting gears instead of braking. To this day, I cringe at the thought of what might have happened if I had broken that Sportif's carbon fork! I was done. I went on to pick up my first new-old-stock 2014 Trek 7.6 FX and never looked back.

Maybe when I'm older and smarter.



I don't know about bar end shifters or barrel shifter (I had to Google that one and scroll deep down) but back when my old Raleigh Flyer was my primary mode of transportation in the 90s, I probably could've used a pair of stem shifters instead of the Raleigh's downtube shifters, since I was on the handlebar tops most of the time (that thing had suicide brake levers that I used a lot.)

With that being said, having trained myself to precisely select every gear with the old Raleigh's downtube friction shifters, it's a learned skill that I still cherish today, especially after I swapped out the factory five-speed freewheel for a seven-speed, which required me to be even more precise. But I was younger and smarter.