There Must Be Something Wrong With Me Because...
... I hate drop bars.
Love my Salsa Journeyman Flat bar. Rode it for a year, still enjoying it. Tried a Warbird and it's amazing, pedals great but doesn't ride so nice on account of the drop bar. The drop bar seems to just lower performance and make everything difficult on account that the position is so awkward you can never really do anything as well or precisely as with a flat bar and you have to have to anticipate maneuvers and get your hands just right. When you want to shift, you brake, when you want to brake, you shift. The control is never as precise and while I've read you have a choice of hand positions they are all terrible, tied for dead last and leave me wishing for a flat bar on account of hands going numb. I can also never really get my hands to grip as well as I can on a flat bar so I can't go fast or risk letting go. And if I do get a good grip on a drop bar then the position is such that I can't brake or shift gears which kills my confidence to do anything but coast, never mind any real speed. I thought about getting a flat bar like the Journeyman to replace the drop bar but then there are control incompatibilities and there's no guarantee for the time and aggravation the end result could work.
What I find that I prefer with a flat bar is that you can shift up, down, steer, keep straight/stable and brake all at the same time without having to change hand position that in a flat bar you can only do one thing and then have to keep changing hand position. I guess a flat bar is OK on short rides or for low intensity bike path/neighborhood stuff but I find the more I need varying controls in rapid succession the slower I go with drop bar. As the ride gets longer, more challenging, more traffic, more bumps or higher speeds and elevation changes, especially fast downhills and higher overall speeds the better the flat bar makes the bike easier to control. What am I doing wrong?