Exactly. The racing thing isn't a jab or anything, it's just that once you have, you encounter situations you know for fact a flat wouldn't have worked out for you. You also end up taking the wife's greenway cruiser out with the kids and try to do the same junk you'd do on your race rig, and find out real quick it doesn't turn out so well. Lol.

I rode the 1968 "extreme" MTB trail in Costa Rica on flats. I damn wish I had my spare set of SPD's to take on the trip. I ran into issues of my feet slipping off multiple times and had the pedal hit my shins.

There are places flats work great. Then there's not.

If I had a commuter and commute time of less than 20min each way, I'd probably roll in flats.