Originally Posted by
RubeRad
That's an interesting analogy, but really that's more like mechanical shifting vs Di2, or perhaps brifters vs downtube or indexed vs friction. I have always preferred manual, not necessarily to "feel more directly connected", but to have a significantly simpler/lighter shifting system that saves gas (partly through less weight, but more significantly through making it easier to 'hypermile' by coasting 50+% of the time)
Sure, there's multiple reasons one might go with one system vs another.
Originally Posted by
RubeRad
As for 5tens, my wife has a pair and loves them. I'm sure they are great, I know they're very popular among mountain bikers, but I've heard they run narrow, so I'm not going to even bother. (I did hear though that Adidas bought 5ten and used their stealth rubber compound on shoes for some other sport, and they might come in wide, that would be worth investigating)
I would disagree with that opinion. I have to go with a "wide" size to be comfortable in most regular shoes and my five tens that are 1/2 size larger than I usually go are very comfortable for me. I recently had to order 2 pairs of sandals from 2 different brands bought the same size for both - one brand fits my widish feet fine, the other is to narrow.
If you have really wide feet, yeah, they might not be wide enough. My dad does and it's annoying they don't offer "wide" sizes for him. If there's an REI near you I believe they sell five tens you could try in person before buying.
My personal experience is that the freeriders do not run narrow, they run average-to-widish.