Originally Posted by
cyccommute
Sorry, but as my Dad would say "Horse hockey!" Unless you have some kind of telekinetic ability, you can't have the proper side of an asymmetric pedal always up for the kind of shoe you are using. Even if the pedal is weighted so that it always hangs the same direction, sooner or later you are going to have to flip the pedal to get the right side up.
And once the bearings have loosened, the heavier side, nonplatform side is going to almost always be down. Either that or your bearings are too tight. This is absolutely not a problem with symmetrical pedals. Like I said, get your feet on the pedal and the cleat will engage.
You can ride SPD pedals with normal shoes too. Without modification or additions. It's not terribly comfortable for any appreciable distance but riding platforms for an appreciable distance isn't any more comfortable.
Not true. Both my single sided road pedals and my platform/spd pedals hang the same way, - edge down, clipless mechanism facing the rear. Knowing that, it's pretty easy to clip in consistently without looking down. Do I get it 100% of the time? No. But I didn't clip in the first try every time with dual sided pedals either.
Yes you can ride on SPDs with regular shoes. You can also use any shoe with just a spindle. It's not how I like to ride however. Nevertheless, I can totally see how for some folks using cleated shoes 100% of the time works just fine. It's not a great solution for me so I like the idea of having a platform side even if my clip-in rate goes down from 95% to 92% on the first attempt (if it goes down at all).