Originally Posted by
ColonelSanders
To my sheer and utter amazement, I have noticed the odd person say that they prefer Gear Shifters without any Gear Indicators on them, and this is something that I am struggling mightily with to understand.
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For the life of me I don't know why you would want to make your cycling life more difficult than it needs to be, yet some people do.
I don't understand why on Earth would anyone need a gear indicator for the front.
There are ONLY 3 gears at most. How hard is that to keep track of?
You can easily judge by your pace and effort to figure out which one you're using.
But, for the rear, I can understand someone having a need for it as there are so many gears nowadays.
Personally I have absolutely no need for an indicator. Never had and never will.
I don't keep track of which exact gear I'm currently in.
Instead I keep track of how many lower gears are left. It's easier that way for me.
BTW, I've never needed a bookmark to keep track of how far I've read any book. So, maybe it's the way I'm wired.
I can never use my past rides as a reference. Past reference is useless to me as
where I ride is quite windy, mostly head wind arrrrgh, and the conditions for each ride is never the same.
My legs would tell me which gear I should be in. It is the one that I can spin without effort(mashing)
and don't spin out. And that gear varies with how fresh my legs are at the particular moment.
I don't mind if shifters come with indicators as long as they can be removed.
As it's the most failure prone part of the shifter. Naturally I remove them if I can.
For each thier own I guess.
If you need it, you need it. If you don't, you don't. Either way is cool with me.