Originally Posted by Tourist in MSN

I have rarely seen any roadies farther out than 20 to 30 miles from the city limits where I live. Most have a tiny saddle bag with a spare tube and presumably a CO2 cartridge. But a few have everything stuffed into their jersey pockets, including an occasional short pump, but I suspect the pump is only a backup.

Week days, they are usually solo riders out for exercise, as am I. Weekends, groups of two or three are more common. A bike with fenders is quite rare, many of them stare at my bike trying to figure out why a bike with drop bars has fenders and a handlebar bag. But small handlebar bags are becoming more common on road bikes in my area.

A friend that I used to work with was really surprised when he saw one of my touring bikes. He said he had never seen a bike with tri shifters on the ends of handlebars. I asked what he meant by tri shifters? He pointed at my bar end shifters on my drop bars and said those were made to use on aero bars for triathlon and time trial bikes, he was surprised that they even fit on my bars. I do not think he believed me when I told him that bar end shifters had been around for a half century or more, much longer than his aero bars on his triathlon bike.