It's All About the Bike by Robert Penn Page A

ideas. He managed to connect John Lennon, rationalist architecture, tattoos, the Provo anarchist movement in 1960s Amsterdam, bootleg music recordings and Le Corbusier with one thread. Come the revolution, he’d be on the barricades, I thought. ‘You know the word most people connect to “freedom” in word association or something like this?’ he concluded. ‘Bicycle.’
    We had wandered through the workshop to a table where a dozen bars and stems were laid out. There were simple aluminium bars, around which Eddy Merckx would have felt happy wrapping his powerful hands during his legendary ascent of Col du Tourmalet in the Pyrenees in 1969; and there were futuristic, integrated carbon handlebar and stem units that might have come from the cockpit of Luke Skywalker’s X-wing fighter.
    â€˜The integrated handlebar and stem is a Cinelli first. For three years, only we make this. Before carbon, all handlebars were round. With aluminium, you have to respect the radius and all the innovation was in the bend. Today the big innovation is in the flat part of the bar. So the ergonomic of the handlebar has changed, dramatically, because carbon can be moulded,’ Antonio said. He was holding a non-integrated Ram bar in his hand. His rings clunked against the carbon as he moved his hands around the expansive flat tops of the bar. I suggested there was room to balance a gin and tonic there.
    â€˜Why not?’ he said. ‘Here a place for a cocktail, here your fingers fall naturally round . . . here a place for your thumb . . . when you stay on the hoods, there is space here for this finger, and here, a place where the palm of the hand fits. If you stay on the bicycle all day, it is very comfortable. Touch it, feel it.’
    It was the weight of a fountain pen. It felt expensive. It also somehow felt instinctively comfortable. I’ve suffered from numb hands over the years. It’s a common cyclists’ complaint, often dubbed ‘cyclists’ palsy’. It’s at its worst off-road, on long descents. The first time I took a mountain bike to Pakistan, I rode off the Shandur Pass (2.5 miles) on a rough, gravel jeep track on a bicycle with rigid front forks. The initial descent off the plateau drops 5,000 ft over 7.5 miles. First my hands went numb — something I was used to — but the alarm bells really started ringing when I realized I couldn’t feel anything beneath my elbows, nor could Ipull the brakes to stop the bike. When I raised a hand to shake some blood back into it, I fell off the bike. I was still picking grit out of my knees and elbows the next morning.
    Even a gentle ride on roads around the shires of England can anaesthetize my hands. I’ve tried raising the handlebars, lowering the saddle, tipping the saddle fore and aft, not gripping the bars too tightly, gripping the bars more tightly, reducing tyre pressure, most types of gel gloves, thicker grips, cork handlebar tape, gel handlebar tape, and yoga to strengthen the muscles in my lower back. I even gave up smoking. But still, if I sit on a bike all day — road, commuter, mountain bike, it doesn’t matter — my hands will go numb at some point, often for some time, and the chances are I’ll be woken that night by a dull throbbing in my fingers.
    A doctor I once met randomly on a bike ride told me it was carpal tunnel syndrome, the medical term for a compressed median nerve in the wrist. Perhaps. The median nerve, which controls the motor and sensory functions for most of the hand, is in the centre of the base of the palm — a part of the body that is frequently, if not always, under pressure on a bike ride.
    There is no doubt that a good fit between bike and rider helps. Brian Rourke was confident that numb hands would be less of a problem on my new steed. And with the Ram bar in my hands, I felt sure I’d stumbled on another part of the solution.
    â€˜You have small hands