Usually I have no interest in hearing somebody describe his bike. I don't want to hear about it, read it in print, look at pictures, or any of that. It's like listening to a dad go on about his new arrival. Okay, fine, I'm glad for you, call me when it begins to hold intelligent conversations. At that point I'll be right over.

Likewise, I wouldn't expect anybody to give a whit what I ride, how I ride, when I ride. Perhaps where I ride might be of some interest, if you're looking for an interesting new secret spot.

I've recently broken this rule several times. I most blatantly broke it when sharing with Slowtwitch readers my Escape Pod. I now add insult to injury with the Wildflower rig. Why do I torture you?

In this particular case, there are two specifics––both ultimately having to do with fit––which compel me to rope you in to what is usually a boring theme. The first has to do with my knees. I've gone on about this before, but I've always just bitched and moaned. I've never done anything about it. This time I have.

If there's one thing I really hate, it's hitting my kneecaps against the back of the armrests when I'm out of the saddle. My problem is, I like a pretty short cockpit––the distance between the nose of the saddle and the place where my hands grab the clip-on extensions. Ergo, the backs of the armrests are that much closer to the saddle, i.e., further back toward me knees. When I'm out of the saddle––which isn't often, but occasional––my knees tend to hit the darn armrest platforms. Ouch.

So what I do is, I use a shorter clip-on combined with a longer stem. This keeps my cockpit distance the same, but it results in moving the armrests up my forearms a bit. In other words, instead of using, say, a Syntace sized medium clip-on with a 120mm stem, I'll use a small clip-on with a 135mm stem. This does the trick. It gets the armrests out of the way of my knees.

The problem is, now the armrests are no longer underneath my elbows, but my forearms––and quite a bit up my forearms. Maybe I'm just being pansy-assed, but so much weight applied to a spot a third of the way up my forearms hurts.

So I took my bars down to my buddy Ves Mandaric––who also built my Yaqui frame––and had him weld on a second set of armrests just in front of the standard producion armrests.

You can see at left how this works, and to below you can get a view from underneath the bars––the right front armrest is in front, with the right rear armrest (the original armrest) just behind it.

Mandaric ovalized a 6000-series tube––probably 1", maybe 7/8", and slotted it. Then he welded it onto the clip-on. The Syntace armrest sits on there perfectly. Because it's slotted, it's even adjustable, just like the rear. He just slid an extra Syntace nut inside the tube and presto, it works just like the amrest right behind it.

I've now got more surface area over which to displace my weight, and I'm a happy guy.

The nice thing about this solution is I can still put a Jetstream bottle inbetween the clip-ons, and I've always liked the idea of a refillable-on-the-fly bottle.

I also put my GU strap-ons on my stem, not my top tube, because, again, I don't like hitting anything when I'm out of the saddle. My legs brush against those GU packets when they're taped onto the top tube.

All this means that I've got an incredible amount of stuff bolted, taped, and fastened on the handlebars. I really want to know how far along I am during this 56-mile ride, so I need a computer on this bike. Where to put it? I decided on a Sports Instruments wireless computer, because I wanted to stick this in an out-of-the-way spot (see photo at top) and I didn't want wires routing every which way.

That brought up another problem, tho, which was how to mount the darn magnet on my Hed3 front wheel. "What's the deal with this magnet?" I wondered. Is this a smart magnet? I wagered not. I guessed that a magnet is a magnet. I happened to have a bunch of magnets I got from Home Depot or some such place, and I Super-glued and then taped––with black plastic tape––one of these magnets to a Hed3 spoke, as is pictured at left. Works great.

The other issue about this bike is its seat angle and saddle position. In not having ridden a tri bike very often during the past couple years––I've been anchored to my road race bike––I've started to lose my faith. I've been listening to those people who've been saying that more modern thought has been advocating a slackening of the seat angle in tri bikes from 78 degrees to 75 or perhaps 76. I suspected there was some wisdom here, and chalked up to exuberant youth my heretofore attempts to persuade people that seat angles of 78 or 79 degrees were the way to go.

But danged if several rides, and many changes in my position, haven't resulted in my being right back where I started––at 78 degrees at the shallowest.

In general I like the road position––in fact the entire road bike––better than the tri bike. But, there is no question that the tri bike is faster, and it's faster yet if you ride it at its most efficient position, which is with a seat angle in the high 70s. When I ride in that position there are some noticeable idiosyncracies to my pedal stroke. I ride with my knees closer to the top tube––perhaps a bit more pigeon-toed than my normal splay-foot––and I spin a fairly fast cadence. I apply pressure to the pedal throughout a wider range of the pedal circle. I can feel myself pulling back past bottom dead center, and I'm also pulling over the top as well. I'm actually almost pointing my toes at the top of the pedal stroke, and I can feel myself applying pressure to the top of my shoe––the upper––as I'm driving over the top. My saddle height is a bit greater when in this position––about 3/4 of a centimeter greater on my tri bike than on my road race bike.

Yes, excellent riders like Peter Reid and Tim DeBoom ride with a more rearward position––perhaps 75 or 76 degrees. You hear a lot about that these days. But it's almost forgotten that Normann Stadler, Jurgen Zack, and many others still hammer along at 78 degrees. I'm with them.