The Drops pt. VI

Okay I was wrong.
This is actually part six of the continuing educational series called The Drops.
No, not about all the times I get dropped, but about my quest for handle bar nirvana.
Which if you have ever been on a handle bar nirvana quest, you, the reader, know that it is a long adventure.
Sort of costly too.
Unless you harness the power of the eVilness that is.
Thankfully eVil eBay has just about every drop bar you can imagine, and some that you probably can't.
Drop bar heaven, in eVilness hell.
Anyways, my new Deda RHM02 bars came in the other day.
These are newfangled drop bars, with the flatter tops and shallow drops.
Deda has some mumbo jumbo on the design and the RHM stands for rapid hand movement, or rapido handido movemento, if you speak Italian.
Okay, not really.
I don't know what it is in Italian, though I suspect I'm pretty close.
Deda has a whole line of these newfangled bars, the RHM01 has traditional round tops, Zero 100 is a more lightweight alloy bar, and the Presa is their carbon bar.
If you are able to put out like a GAGILLION watts of power, you may consider their new 35 series bar, which is 35mm in diameter for extra stiffness; you also need a 35 series stem though.
Okay, here's the old bars:



If you've been following along at home, you, the reader, may remember that those were NOS 3T bars with TdF bends.
That's also the old stem, which had a 2 degree lower drop.
Here's the new bars:



As you can see, I've gone back to the tops and the hoods even and parallel to the ground.
The ends of the drops extend behind the tops about the same as traditional bars.
The hoods are about a half centimeter further away but now they are about even with the clamping area, not below like before.
With these bars, I get the flatness on the tops and the drops sort of parallel to the ground.
The tops are the ovoid flat type, comfy for my largish hands:



I spend most of the time on the tops and corners so this will work out well for me.
The diameter of the bars extend out from the clamping area, to help with stiffness I guess and to help harness the 3.5 GAGILLION watts of power my Constant Velocity Thighs(CVT) produce:



I'd like to note that my flexibility has a lot do with how all these bars fit me.
I've noticed that my comfort level has increased not only with the bar changes, but also by riding in all the different positions drop bars offer.
I still cannot ride indefinitely on the hoods, but it's getting better; I find I can spend more time there before becoming uncomfortable.
Finding my balance position on the bicycle helps too as it relieves the pressure I was putting on my hands.
I took them out for a few miles and it felt pretty good.
Nothing drastic, good or bad.
Okay, I think I'm all done!
Now all that's left is stem length and stack height, something I can do with stuff I already have.
Actually I was thinking of getting some carbon bars, you know, just to see what the hype is all about.
Maybe.