I’m a fidget-ter… I’m sure that’s the right word… I like to fidget on my bike, move around to get myself comfortable, and the Giant Anthem didn’t let me do that with it’s straight bars and lock-on grips. I was finding that on long rides, which involved bits of road or flat (fast) cross-country bits, I couldn’t stretch out and put the power down. I’d had bar-ends on my previous two mountain bikes – big ski-bars-ends on the Saracen and stumpy little things on the Marin, so I was pretty sure that they’d work on the Anthem.
Then during the summer we found ourselves at Planet Velo in the Jura in France, and having spent a few minutes browsing their shop while they tried to shut-up around us, I felt that it was only right that we bought something… so I bought these BBB Bar-ends.
They fitted easily and provide a solid attachment to the handlebars, but the the one issue I have with them is that they’re very shiny. In recent weeks, as we head into the Autumn and the weather gets wetter, this hasn’t been so much of a problem, as wet gloves grip the bar-ends quite well. But over the summer, when everything’s been bone-dry, I’ve never felt entirely attached to those bar-ends – they’ve been OK on the falter sections, but I’ve felt that I needed to drop back onto the proper grips, lest I lose a firm grip and get bounced off the bike.
