Originally Posted by
abshipp
I can take or leave bar ends. People always say that they're basically as convenient as brifters but I don't see it.
Here is my perspective as someone who has toured exclusively with bar ends:
Most of the time, I don't miss having brifters. But during a cross-PA tour back in 2014 I realized that they would have been much more convenient in certain circumstances. There was a long section of road with relatively small ups and downs. The road was bumpy in a lot of places with patches of sand/gravel on the shoulder. It would have been nice to be able to shift quickly and frequently through the range of the cassette to try to take advantage of momentum as I transitioned from going down to up, but I was reluctant to take a hand of the bars to reach for the bar ends. Instead, I pretty much coasted into the uphill until my speed dropped to the point where it caught up with whatever gear I was in.