zacster

I put "bar inners" on my flat bars. They are in a position more akin to road levers than the wide bar ends. I was riding around Brooklyn yesterday and found myself using them as my regular riding position, where up until now I had to remind myself to use them. I can use the brakes and shift one way in that position too so it all is starting to feel natural. I still have to move my hand to shift into lower gears but just kind of roll my hand down a bit.

dvdwmth

I looked into 'bar inners' because i did use drop bars for 30 years and it seemed that the hoods was the one position i liked. I decided they cost more then i wanted to spend and found that bar ends were working for me. I especially like the new style that are more compact and are often paired with ergonomic grips. In my case, i just want to be able to rotate my hands. Where did you buy yours?

Repentersprite, one thing that doesn't seem to get discussed as much is how the bide performs under load. I have a Saga soma (recently discontinued unfortunately) and it is uncanny how much better the bike feels when you have loaded panniers on the back. It is also designed to carry most of its load in the rear. It is extremely stable and after a full day of riding I'm much more comfortable than when I've used other bikes on similar rides. By comparison, I put a small handlebar bag on a racing bike, nothing more, and i thought i was going to die. It really messed up the handling in a way that was scary.

Try not to be discouraged by people suggesting you shouldn't post questions on forums or "overthink it" ( I really hate that last one. Anti intellectualism really galls me. And why do people join forums to tell others not to post in forums).
While I agree with the folk here who say you need to ride to figure out what works for you, bikes are far more complex that one would think without really studying them. After 30 years of biking, even with a great deal of curiosity and fascination with the science of bikes and how to make them work for me, I discovered I had been inflicting much unnecessary physical pain on myself by accepting my understanding of bike dogma instead of fixing what hurt.

I finally ditched computers, clip in pedals, stretchy clothes (except bike shorts. I'll be wearing those in my coffin.) drop bars, skinny tires, being aerodynamic, any concern for how fast i could go, and all sorts of bike cult things that I realized were burdensome. Then I back tracked and readopted bike computers, bike clothes, and how fast i can go (its annoying to discover that what i used to be able to cover in four hours now requires riding into the night. I'm all for relaxed touring, but time is still a limited resource).

If my Soma was stolen, I would first look at something like the Fargo, or other bikes that have a high head tube. Velo Orange has a cool one. I like the modern braze-ons for things like water bottle mounts on the fork incase you want to use a full frame bag.

Just be sure that the bike is designed to handle the load you're going to put on it. Touring is still a niche and it seems many bike companies are trying to make many bikes multi purpose. Fine for light touring but not so much when decending with loaded paniers.

dvdwmth

Here's a cool post about the fargo. Note the person in the third post has a LHT and several other touring bikes and compares the fargo to them. No agenda regarding this bike. Im just intrigued.

bikeforums .net/touring/676842-salsa-fargo-any-real-life-experiences.html

zacster

The bar inners were definitely a little pricey, especially since the only ones available only worked with their grips, which are also pricey, but good. SQLabs are the manufacturer and they only seem to be available in Germany at the moment.

As you can see it is an old bike too.