Badger_South said:Trouble with getting in and out of clips is that I keep
looking down and lose my bearing and swerve a bit.
I'm workin' on it.
Here's a basic tip, and then a couple more arcane tips.
When you're starting out, forget about the clip you came out
of. For the first five pedal strokes (or twenty, depending
what's going on) just push on the bottom of that pedal. Get
up to speed.
That will get you across an intersection without being
distracted, and you'll be fast enough to be stable. _Then_
you can deal with the toe clip.
Second tip: I still use toe clips. I once found a product
called "toe flips" that bolt onto the back of the pedal.
They're just tabs of sheet metal that sort of angle down and
back from the top surface of the pedal. Hmmm - let's try
ASCII art:
___________
| |\ OK, that's super-crude, but the square
| |parts \ are the pedal, and the slanted parts
| |are toe flips
They're actually a bit closer to horizontal. They make it
easier to flip the pedal, and they kind of funnel your foot
in there. I _really_ doubt they're for sale any more, but it
would be really easy to make that using thin sheet metal, a
pair of tin snips and a drill to make screw holes. E-mail me
(note corrected address below) if you want more details.
Third tip: Sometimes getting into toe clips is hard because
the shoe bottom has little lugs that catch and interfere. I
took a utility knife and angled the front of each little
lug, so the shoes slid in more smoothly. It helped
significantly.
Fourth, more general tip: Go to a parking lot, practice
flipping into the toe clips, and carefully watch to see
what, if anything, is making it difficult. Do your shoelaces
snag something? Is the toe strap too low on the one side?
Whatever - you may be able to identify a culprit and fix it
pretty easily.
Good luck!
--
--------------------+ Frank Krygowski [To reply, remove
rodent and vegetable dot com, replace with cc.ysu dot edu]
