Mo Saycool wrote:
> The guy at the bike shop suggested balancing
> against the garden wall for half an hour practicing getting in and out
> before the first trip on the road but this doesn't tend to replicate the
> stress you are under when you need to stop in a hurry.
When I got my first pair of clipless pedals I decided it would be a good
idea to get used to using them riding around the farm that I was living
on at the time, before taking them out on the road. Of course, I forgot
that the farm had dogs. One of them ran in front of me, I braked,
failed to unclip, and fell off behind a reversing tractor (fortunately
several yards behind a tractor that had only just started reversing).
My second clipless fall happened a couple of weeks later, when I heard a
rubbing noise from my BoB (the mudguard was rubbing against the tyre).
I slowed down and stopped while looking over my shoulder at the trailer,
and completely forgot about the SPD's. I gracefully (I like to think)
fell over onto the bank at the side of the deserted Ashdown Forest road.
The third fall was a few weeks after that, when I thought I was used to
them. I was riding the Cuckoo Trail with my then GF (now my wife) and
was riding rather closer behind her than is sensible with a novice
cyclist. A puppy darted under her front wheel and she slammed the
brakes on. I stopped without hitting her, but in the process failed to
unclip. I shot forwards on the bike with my feet still attached to the
pedals and managed to bash myself at the base of the sternum with a bar
end. Breathing was uncomfortable for several weeks.
In the 7 years since then, I think I've had two falls due to clipless
pedals. One was while I was still getting the hang of slow speed
manoeuvring in tight spaces on the recumbent. The other was the morning
after fitting new cleats, when I'd forgotten to adjust the pedal tension
to compensate. I was riding up the hill to the office when I met a
lorry coming the other way. It would have been impractical for the
lorry to reverse and the road wouldn't have been wide enough for us to
pass each other on the road, so I steered right, headed for the pavement
and stopped. I managed to unclip my right foot, but not the left. The
right foot was on the downhill side and didn't have a hope of reaching
the floor. The left foot was stuck.
--
Danny Colyer (my reply address is valid but checked infrequently)
<URL:http://www.colyer.plus.com/danny/>
"He who dares not offend cannot be honest." - Thomas Paine
