I had a pretty good clipless fall yesterday. It involved coming to a 4 way intersection at the same time as a pretty gal in her car. I went into a trance thinking wow that girl is pretty hot, then SMACK I hit the ground. Bloodied up my left knee pretty well.

I'd say the "normal shoes" thing is the bigger consideration when commuting in a city -- frequent clipping and unclipping just isn't that big a deal when you've had a little practice. I wear SixSixOne mtb shoes with recessed cleats -- they're fine to walk in, although I wouldn't want to walk for miles and miles in them. If I'm ever going anywhere where I will want to lock up the bike and walk some distance, I will throw a pair of Tevas in the pack. Looooove my clipless...

The reason you feel like your feet are coming off the pedals is that you have trained your brain to believe your feet are firmly attached. Your legs are not really significantly adding power, they are just de-weighting more than necessary. A few days of riding without being attached will retrain your legs to stay on the pedals. A wide surface area pedal with a grippy shoe will give enough traction even in the wet and provide comfort and convenience for commuting where you may need to stop often in traffic. As an aside I do have a high rpm spin (which is how you develop speed) and I do not 'simply mash'. Making the assumption that I haven't tried 'clipless', mash when I pedal or know nothing about pedaling correctly is a mistake. Open your minds.

My font (size) helps myself and others read it better with vision problems.

I switched to clipless years ago, from toe clip equipped pedals. I hated those, kept forgetting
to pull the foot back when dismounting. I found with clipless, that even when I forgot, the
natural tendency to move out wards from the heel, would do the unclip for me.

The last fall I had with clipless was a while ago when I had fitted new cleats, for some reason,
the left was tight the first few times, and it caught me out at a traffic light, embarrassment, but no
injury. I wouldn't ride without them these days, though I am considering Power Straps ( is that the name?)

1) Go to your display panel and click the Appearance Tab. Select Extra Large Font Size.
2) Firefox and IE..View Menu...Text Size

Try Opera.
They have the best, extra-smooth layout-preserving zoom (Numpad +/- or Ctrl++/Ctrl+- for larger steps, Ctrl-F11 for "anti-horizontal scrollong" mode (does not always work well)).
Seriously, this zoom is worth all the trouble of learning new application, if you are low-vision user. I have been using it for 5 years now,

MSIE 7 has something similar, but not quite as good.

ADD: By the way, If youi tried it earlier and didn't like it because of JS issues and memory leaks, - it's all fixed now, I'm yet to find non-activex site which does not work in 9.2 and 9.5 beta, but works in Firefox.

I did forget about the text size window......my youngest keeps messing with my settings. It sucks to get old.

I just went clipless (SPD) this past Wednesday.

So far, I haven't gone all the way to the ground... the bike has gone toward my clipped-in foot on two or three occasions. However, I have the retention screws set as loose as possible so that (at least so far) any quick attempts to put a foot down result in sufficiently quick unclipping to avoid a fall.

So far I've never had my shoes come off the pedals unless I wanted them to. Are there any good reasons for me to ever consider tightening up those retention screws?

Longer than you think. That was Arte Johnson.

Went on my inaugural ride this am and figure I am pretty much a natural with clipless pedals...went and did some mountain biking over crusty snow, muddy section, through some good puddles and did some serious climbing.

I figure the power transfer was better with the harder shoes and I was going up some of the harder climbs like they were nothing.

THANK YOU! Artie Shaw was one of the top jazz clarinetists of his day. Gotta think before I type!

Musta killed too many brain cells...

Not 'road shoes'...'touring shoes' are what you need. Road shoes, mtb shoes and touring shoes are 3 different animals...wish I had pics. Your lbs steered you towards mtb shoes because they DO have recessed cleats, just not recessed enough. They're made to get off and portage the bike then get back on. Some mtb shoes have 'spikes' ala football or soccer shoes at the toe for hill climbing while carrying the bike. Touring shoes are made for, well...touring. The only shoes I've seen that have the cleat recessed enough to clear the pavement are touring shoes. Like I said, I've got 2 pair of old C'dales, but don't know the model name. Lake makes a pair that LOOK a great deal like the C'dales I have, but are blue/grey/black instead of beige/burgandy/black. Again, I don't know the model, but if you go to the Lake website, I'm sure you'll be able to find them.

Again, congrats on going clipless!

MTB shoes.

Road shoes.

Touring Shoes

Nash,

Thanks for clearing that up. The LBS showed me a pair of shoes with the toe cleats you described (they're removable, evidently) and called them 'cyclocross' shoes. The cleat recess was quite shallow. The shoes I have are fine for now, I just have to be careful where I walk. I only noticed the cleats when walking on concrete, so on smoother surfaces they might be ok for now.

Trombone,

Thanks for the links! It's good to actually see the differences in the soles and the depth of the cleat recess. This is quite the learning experience. BTW, do you play? I'm a tuba guy myself...

Ultimately I'll be looking for a more walkable shoe, but I have to 'keep it real' in terms of spending for the time being. Thanks to your advice, I'll look more carefully at the touring shoes to prepare for the next upgrade.

Gonna be a sloppy commute tomorrow - I'm looking forward to having my feet secure to the pedals instead of slipping everytime I hit a bump.

Thanks muchly for the tips!

Yes. If they are too loose you might find yourself unclipping without intending to. I started the same as you; loose. Every time I would unclip without intending to, I'd tighten the tension on that side by a quarter turn. After doing that a few times, it's now set just right, though I believe with wear further adjustments or replacement will have to be made.

Dont mean to hijack the thread, but I am one of those on the border cases. Right now I just ride plain pedals with nothing connecting my feet to the bicycle. I have ridden my new bike a few hundred miles and have a good feel of it, and my LBS is strongly recommending me the clipless pedals too.

My only concern is, apart from my 32 mile RT commute, I run all my errand work on my bike as well. Like going to coffee shop, going out to park for a jog, going for grocery etc. Now it is not possible for me to wear the shoes with cleat at all those places. And for that extra benifit of clipless on my commute, I dont want to give away all these flexibility of wearing any shoes and hopping on the bike and running around ...

I am lost and would appreciate some suggestions !

Shimano or Forte dual sided pedals would help you. Clipless one side and platform on the other.
https://www.performancebike.com/shop/...e.cfm?SKU=2275

Wow thats awsome !! Thanks for showing me those

Now where's the fun in that?

So????
I like pointless arguments. Besides, you don't know CV. This is his main point about clipless pedals that comes up periodically.
Another point.... that is my non argumentative response. You will know when someone gets a rise out of me. My temper is something else.

There can be a learning curve --- I sported a few nice looking bruises - I always seemed to do a slo-mo knee to curb maneuver ... - learned on a set of Looks - like my spds better, probably putting some frogs on the new mtb though.

I came from riding all my bikes with PowerGrips for a year to going with CrankBros on the commuter and Speedplays on the weekend bike. So, I consider myself lucky because the PowerGrips has conditioned me to twist my foot out to get out of the straps which is basically the same as clipless pedals.

So far I have not fallen down from the CrankBros' but I have fallen once from the Speedplays. I was trying to make a u-turn on a slightly uphill, narrow road while going very slow. Needless to say I lost all momentum while in the middle of the u-turn and crashed on my left side. I sprained my left wrist and scraped my knee. Before falling down I remember thinking to myself "This is not good. Unclip, unclip." -Sigh-

This has always been my point regarding the use of clipless. I can't afford to fall over and bust my hip or shoulder. I've done it (fallen) three times because of clipless. All were slow speed, weird little events but it got me thinking. I did some testing over a couple of years and compared my times over my weekly 9 mile route and found no discernible difference between clipless and plain BMX pedals and skater shoes. I suppose some might have a reason for clipless ( high bottom recumbents come to mind) as do racers, while actually racing, or maybe even riding constantly in the rain. But for the rest of us, a few tenths of a second is not a good reason to give up the convenience of being able to wear any shoe and get off the bike quickly and silently. With 'regular' pedals you never have to do any cleat maintenance or be concerned about cleats clacking on floors when the shoes wear. I know, I know, a whole bunch of you guys are into your hard soled shoes, coupled with those tiny surface area pedals and thats fine by me. I just haven't found the need to 'invest' in special shoes/pedals in order to ride my bicycle. This runs counter to what many people have been led to believe but seriously open your minds and do some personal testing over a long period. See if riding without being attached has some merit. You might find it liberating. Just keep in mind you have to use a pedal with a large surface area and a shoe that grips the traction pins.

I agree that clipless pedals don't have much of a speed advantage for a commute but they do help me accelerate across an intersection and I just feel more secure in them. I have double-sided pedals and use warm regular boots in the cold and wet. Warm clipless shoes are outrageously high priced and the overboots are a big pain to use.

When I first went clipless I stopped at a crosswalk leaving Denver's busiest park and leaned over to punch the pedestrian crossing button and fell over. I ended up on my back with the wheels pointing straight up. A woman runner stopped and asked me if I was OK. I said, "Yeah, I'm just a ****."

...aaaannnnd.....

So much for the streak... I was riding along a MUP, came up to a bad-visibility street crossing, and unclipped my left foot (SOP). Just as I was about to roll through I noticed an oncoming car and (prudently, I thought at the time) thought it would be best to wait even though I could have made it if I put the hammer down. So I hit the brakes, stopped, and as the bike began to tip over to the left I realized that my left foot had clipped back into the pedal. Tried to hang on to the bars to avoid jamming my wrist in an attempt to break my fall and was mostly successful. Slight scrape to the knee, no damage to the bike, and most importantly, no nearby witnesses other than possibly the driver of the car.

I have to say that it really wasn't much of an event--not having particularly brittle bones I think I can easily take a few more of those sorts of falls (but hopefully won't).