on knowing just enough to be dangerous

When I picked up my bike this afternoon, I overcame my fear of being a freddy little pest (pesty little Fred?) and insisted that they put an 80mm stem back on it. After three weeks on the 38cm handlebar and 75mm stem, my shoulder pain has eased a bit, but is still not even as comfortable as I was with the 40cm handlebar and 80mm stem (the discomfort of which had prompted me to change out the handlebar in the first place). So, essentially, my attempt to fix my shoulder pain actually made it worse.

I've tried to suck it up and ride through the pain, hoping that it would improve as those muscles strengthened, but now it's been over 200 miles, and I'm looking at a 120-130 mile weekend coming up. The thought of stabby shoulder pain for all those miles is more than I can stand. This way, I figure I'll have about 40 miles between my commute and my club ride to figure out whether the shorter stem was the problem, and I can always swap it back before the century if it doesn't help. I wish I had insisted on the 80mm stem in the first place...then I'd know which change made the pain worse. As it is, I'm starting with the stem, and if it feels the same, I'll try the 40cm handlebars with the 75mm stem.

I have such a hard time working with the bike shop guys...not because they're ever rude or dismissive of me, but because I sometimes feel like they should be. I don't race, my bike's full of chips and scratches, I have no mechanical sense whatsoever, and I barely average 15 mph. I am painfully aware of how little I know about this stuff, so I feel unqualified to tell them what I want, even when I've researched it to death. Whenever I'm in there talking about lengths and angles or, say, buying a carbon handlebar, I feel a total poser. Like that guy who knows nothing about computers, but wants to tell me how our network domain should be configured based on something his brother-in-law read in a magazine last week. That guy bugs me. I don't want to be that guy. Yet, every time I ask for something at the bike shop, I feel like that guy.

Of course, if being That Guy gets me through a century without feeling like someone's stabbing me in the back every time I turn my head, I suppose it's worth it.