The Art of Handlebar Wrapping

Taping road bike handlebars is something I've never been good at. Customers used to bring their bikes into the shop one week after buying them, and their handlebar tape would be twisted and disfigured, hanging off the bars. It was always me who had wrapped them. I would forget to wash my hands before putting on new bar tape, and people would come in to pick up their tuned-up bike only to see the white handlebars covered in black grease from my hands. My current commuter bike is mangled. A moving truck hit the handlebars while I was locked on the street. It scraped away a lot of the handlebar tape, but if anything it looked clean in one spot for a few days. I pretend that I leave the tape all messed up on my own bike as a theft preventative tool, but really I have to endure cold hands on bare metal while riding to work in the morning because I cannot wrap them properly.