It's time for an update on my dropbar mtb. I've been running it for several months with the FSA 2x9 crankset and Jtek derailleur adapter, and it works like a charm. My complaint about the FSA crankset is that the design doesn't improve the chainline nor the q-factor that much over a standard three chainring mtb crank. The upcoming SRAM XX crank intrigues me, but my financial situation firmly puts that to rest. The Jtek Shiftmate adapter, which changes the cable pull of the 10sp STI to match the 9sp mtb cassette, has barely required any tuning. I'm quite pleased. I'm using a road triple STI to control the front derailluer, and it seems adequate. The left shifter is the most half-assed aspect of the bike, so I should thank my stars that it shifts as well as it does. But now both levers match, whereas before I had a right side STI and a standard brake lever with a bar end shifter on the left side. This lever symmetry allows the next evolution to my bike, this time at the handlebar. Though I had considered bars such as the On-one Midge and Origin-8 Gary bar, I had to reject them because I couldn't make my bike's initially asymmetrical lever set-up work on such bars. I could get either the lever bodies in the same place, or I could get the levers to the same reach, but not both. One could argue that an offroad dropbar should only need to be usable from the drops, thus lever reach would be the overriding parameter. But I was unwilling to totally abdicate the hood position. So ended up choosing a more conventional road dropbar in the widest size available, 44cm c-c.

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