Is Bar Tape SO Expensive?
I guess when you work in an industrial equipment store, there are just so many alternatives for the regular cork & synthetics / cloth / leather options. And seeing as the availability of these alternatives could be seen as one of the perks of the job (i.e. free , provided that the boss doesn’t catch you smuggling them out), you’d just have to try them all, wouldn’t you?
Like this guy in Osijek earlier this month:
There was something odd about the bar tape, so I got a little closer…
Those brake levers are cool - I had ones just like them on the Dawes Lightning I had in my early teens. But there’s definitely something odd about the "tape" on the handlebars…
Reinforced plastic tubing?! Surely that can’t be very comfortable - all sweaty in the summer, and with all those ridges pressing into your hands. Unless the rider is one of those bike-fettishists, and the handlebars are ribbed for extra pleasure . . . ?
Ew.
What would the guy use if he worked for a barbed wire supplier i wonder, must love pain using the pipe
I recognize those brake levers too. We used to call them suicide levers. I had my own fun experience with them when I took my old ten speed bike from flat Cambridge to hilly Wales on a holiday. Suddenly I found that my not so well adjusted brakes definitely didn’t stop me if I was riding on the tops and pulled on the suicide levers (which I’d got in the habit of doing). In fact, I was still accelerating as I headed towards that gravelly corner…
Suicide levers don’t pull the cable so far as the real brake levers. They pull just a short distance and bump into your handlebars. What’s more, they actually get in the way of the real levers pulling enough cable. I removed mine (just undo the bolt on the side and they drop off) and swapped to generally riding on the hoods. The brakes worked well afterwards.
We had some similar grisly term for gear levers mounted in that position, but I never saw an injury due to them.