Here’s a thing I’m bad at and can help you be bad at too. This is no false modesty either. One time I asked my friend Matt for some help replacing a headset. He had a headset press, and I didn’t. Because he’s a nice guy, he said, “Yeah. No problem. It looks we’re also gonna re-wrap those bars, huh?” Like, he couldn’t touch my bike without fixing the very bad job I’d done with my bar tape.
So, I consider myself something of a master of incompetence on this, and having just attempted a new wrap job last night, I thought I’d share what I’ve (not) learned with you here today.
If you’re going to (not) wrap your handlebars correctly, there are a few things you’ll want to do in advance. First, don’t do it very much. I like to replace my bar tape just before the point I can see the bars through the old tape. When you don’t do something very often, you don’t get good at it, and that’s critical to not doing it correctly. Next, drink a lot of coffee. The process of wrapping handlebars is one that rewards a calm and exacting mindset. A large dose of caffeine should ensure you’ve got none of that going on when you bust the new tape out of the package and think to yourself, “Right. How does this go again?”
Definitely don’t have all the tools you need ready, a pair of scissors, a roll of electrical tape. If you really want to do it wrong, don’t even secure the bike in a work stand. Just lean it against something, or even better, try to hold it upright with the front wheel between your knees. You’re really primed for (not) success then.
Bar tape goes on counterclockwise, unless you go the other way, which is the same way as the clock. One of those ways is right, anyway. You also need to leave some of the tape overhanging the bars at the bottom, so you have something to jam into the hole with the plug-thing. How much you leave overhanging is anyone’s guess. Like actually, no one knows. You should pick a random amount. That definitely doesn’t work.
Once you’ve started, the die is cast. There’s no going back, except what I try to do is make sure the tape overlaps the same amount with every turn, keeping it tight, but not too tight. In my over-caffeinated and unprepared state, this turns out to be impossible though, so I actually do go back. I wind and unwind, wind and unwind, until I have it just right give up and just keep going.
If you get as far as the shift lever, well congratulations. This is like clearing the first level on Tetris. You’re pleased with yourself, but you haven’t done sh$% yet.
I hesitate to even tell you what (not) to do next. It involves the little piece of extra tape that comes in the package, reversing the wrap direction, and making sure you overlap with the hood of the lever, but not too much. Basically, rub your belly, pat the top of your head, and recite Romeo’s soliloquy from the balcony scene while solving for x in the equation 13y – 4x = x/y – z. I’m not sure that last equation is solvable, just like I’m not sure I’ve ever done the dance around the shift lever correctly.
There is good news/bad news AFTER the lever. The good news is you made it this far (although I promise if you check the front side of the bar at this point, you will find that one of your wraps didn’t fully cover the one the before it and is now protruding in way that you will never to be able to ignore, but the idea of going fully backwards past the lever again gives you such mental anguish that you just can’t even consider it now. You have to keep going. And that’s the good news.
The bad news is that this is the really crucial part of the job. You don’t ride in the drops that much. You could probably get over what happened down there with a little willful ignorance. No big. But how the rest of this goes will determine whether you lose your mind on your very next ride, or somewhere further down the road. Now it really matters that the tape lays flat, and that each loop is even. And because it matters you will work really hard on it, and because you work really hard on it, it will be the most frustrating part, because you still won’t get it right.
No one (like you) has ever gotten it right.
But things are about to get worse. You’ve got finish this job, and the finish requires cutting the tape on a bias that allows it to taper onto itself evenly. In a perfect world, you’ve already cut the strips of electrical tape that will seal that pointy end of the tape in its place, a clean, hard edge where the tape ends and the logo of the handlebar begins.
What I usually do is get one side buttoned down, imperfect from bottom to top, and then I embark on the other side with a little more gusto, having just re-learned some valuable lessons. The second side goes better, which is nice, but then that requires redoing the first side.
You can probably see where this is going now, huh? Working back and forth between the sides, sometimes improving, sometimes just making things worse. It’s Sisyphean. It’s dyspeptic. It’s horribly discouraging.
But eventually you give up, and you ride around with your shame on full display for all your more competent cycling friends to enjoy. In fact, I can almost hear the smug chortling of the more mechanically adept among you, the folks who actually enjoy wrapping bars, who take great satisfaction in the precision of the work, in the fresh, clean look a well-wrapped set of handlebars give your bike.
It’s at this point, with the job “done,” that I come back upstairs from the garage and consider selling all my bikes.
