Clipping In, Clipping Out

Or, making decisions when expert advice is a mess of contradictions

For most of my life I rode cheapo bikes. I didn’t pay much attention to bike technology — I just bought the second-cheapest bike at the bike shop and rode away with it.

I knew that hard-core cyclists had all sorts of special gear. One of the main things they wore were cycling shoes with clips, which “clip in” to special pedals. I was told this is a much more efficient way to ride: Each leg can, on the upstroke, pull upwards a little bit. No movement is wasted!

It didn’t affect me. I had no such special gear. I just rode whatever cheap bike I’d bought, which had “flat pedals”. You didn’t clip into those; you just jumped on with whatever shoes you were wearing, and rode off. The way I figured it, who cares what the hardcore lycra-wearing cyclists were doing? They’d blast past me on their featherweight $5,000 carbon-fiber bicycles, vanishing into the distance like the Millennium Falcon.

Eh. Let ’em blast past me. I was just riding to meet a friend for drinks. I didn’t need the Serious Cyclist tech. I wasn’t a long-distance cycling freak, right?

But then I became a long-distance cycling freak.