Peter Signorini said:
Basically SPD on one side and nothing at all to stand on on the reverse.
Utter [censored] for traffic use.
Cheers
Peter
Well, here's two small monetary units from the other side of the counter.
Hi Peter, I remember you from a shop I used to work at that you used to patronise (no, I promise it ain't gonna get personal 😉 ):
Everyone's opinion is just that, generated from their own riding experience. The reason I recommend this style (if we're talking about the M-323/343 style: platform/SPD) of pedal to the beginning/casual rider is that it provides a level of security that a failed clip-in attempt can jeopardise, i.e., platform to push on without potential slippage, bangage of shin, swearage, stoppage in traffic and runoverage. If we're talking about another SPD road setup, I apologise.
You, nor I, seem to like them, for (and I stress this) our own riding. The Crank Bros. EggBeater seems to be the exact opposite (& it's getting rave reviews from *experienced* riders), with no way you you put your foot on them that you cannot engage them. But remember, getting the cleat in is a kinaesthetic challenge when you're new to it, and a bad foot slip still perturbs me, on the (thankfully now rare) occasions when I make them. So I can imagine a fair level of terror on the part of a novice, when the cleat fails to engage, or fails to disengage, and bruising of ego and body parts results. A platform just adds the safety blanket, "Oh, I can engage when the traffic isn't too heavy and when I'm feeling like it" is better than "@#$%ing clipless pedals, it's all a big gyp, I'm going back to toe-clips and sneakers! (groan)". Perhaps you need an up/crossgrade.
I've got to say, and I can't really be all humble or equivocal about this without sounding mealy-mouthed, that something that is at the top of my peeve list is the vocally tendentious (on the supposed behalf of, and to other customers) LBS customer. I realise I'm going to sound a bit up myself here, but the reason you get a job in a good shop is because you have a fair breadth of cycling experience, and try to keep up with what's going on, product/sports science wise. Someone's opinion is just that, but I strive to have a well-informed one, which is what some of the purchase price of the item you decide on is going towards buying. You can't do your job properly if someone is bullishly naysaying what you want to say to a customer: it goes back to the discussion about trusting the judgement of the people you shop with. If you trust them, you believe that they are NOT just trying to push any old [censored] onto you, and that they value your business, and your cycling progress, performance, development, whatever, and that you are NOT just an insignificant profit generation datum. You get a lot of nice, well-informed people as customers in bike shops (it seems to go with the territory), but you also get a fair number of eccentrics stuck in various ruts of their own devising, whom you try and humour as best you can. Said eccentrics are often fanatics about a particular product/manufacturer/style, and will loudly declaim to anyone listening why Shimano/Campagnolo is [censored], bar mounted shifters are Satan's own underarm stench, and that only sexually suspect Communist vinyl fetishists would ride anything other than a Brooks B17 saddle (well, perhaps I am exaggerating slightly, but we're all on that continuum somewhere . . . 😉 ).
So, whilst I think it is your moral duty as an upstanding citizen of this fine democracy we call home to tell it like it is, perhaps that 'is' is your own 'is'. Someone else's 'is' is back down, or up, the track somewhere, at a different level of development. Remember, us LBS employees see all manner of cyclists, and we don't often rip the same customer off twice (or even once, coz we don't want to), and can often judge, if you'll let us, what we think might help the customer beyond where they are to somewhere more comfortable, more efficient, faster, or whatever they want to do on a bike. Then it will be their custom to come back and obtain their next purchase from us, because they feel as tho' they have been treated well (try that on the Internet). Sorry about teaching Granny to suck eggs and all that, but I'm trying to demonstrate that we're not all as dim as some like to make out.
Maybe start a discussion, more obliquely, so you don't put either the other customer or the salesperson offside. Advantages/disadvantages, tradeoffs/benefits, upgrades et c., and if the salesperson knows their stuff (and isn't a MORON), can & will get involved in, and this process will even let him/her know what a critical cyclist really thinks, rather than just bagging said product outright, and losing you some reciprocal goodwill.
You could always look at RoadBikeReview.com, if you wanted a broad x-section of opinion. Or mtbr.
M "my 2c, oh, alright, $5.20 worth" H
