I’m old as dirt. My first two race bikes employed toe clips and toe straps and that set-up was bad. For many reasons it was bad and any retro-hipster who thinks otherwise is wrong. When Lemond and Hinault started racing on the white Look clipless pedals, everyone but Sean Kelly quickly switched. Talk about a quantum improvement, it was long overdue change. Look made improvements to their models, like the notion of float, and other manufactures jumped in. The new paradigm was a cleat on the pedal, like the original quill pedal system but with a spring loaded snap-in, twist-out pedal. Everyone was happy.
Everyone is happy until you have to replace a worn out plastic cleat. Did I walk a lot in my cycling shoes? Did all liquor stores have rough cement floors with giant moving sanding belts in front of the cash registers? I don’t remember that but I do remember replacing cleats too often and the duplication of cleat position was tedious. I could live with that, practice makes perfect but it was the creaking that drove me to madness. No amount of wax could stop the occasional creaking the cleat and pedals would make while climbing. Rule #65 was being violated before it was a Rule.
Wiser friends had already switched to Speedplay pedals. I was a little wary; they looked weird. One day into using them I understood: total frictionless float, two-sided entry, mindless pedal release. There is no cleat alignment issue as the pedal has no fixed position in the cleat. I was overcome with regret. Why had I waited so long? Why did I stick with creaking Look French pedals? Life is too short for such rubbish and I wasted too much of my cycling life with them. I’ve been using the X-series stainless steel pedals and the original pair was happily going on eighteen-plus years until I replaced the pedal needle bearings and bodies…I don’t want to talk about it. If you employ the good aftermarket cleat covers, and use a little white lightning teflon on the cleat spring bales, the cleats can last a few years. The pedal bodies have grease injector ports. Inject, wipe clean and that is the maintenance routine, easy and fun.
I’ve never used another model of Speedplay so I can’t speak to the advantage of limited float. When riding my right foot does a weird swing out toward the bottom of each stroke. To my mind that is a good thing, the float allows my leg to do that, without that maybe some extra knee wear would occur.
Frank and I have discussed the great pedal switch and his major obstacle to switching pedals is having to switch the whole n+1 stable over and that is not cheap. For Frank and VHM that stable may be five bikes. That’s a lot of pedals. Inertia. Commitment. It’s a big problem. Or one takes Marko’s approach: different shoes for each bike.
I have brand loyalties but if another cycling product is superior in form and function I hope I will see that and move on. Campagnolo gruppos and Chris King headsets are two brands on my bikes that I don’t see moving away from but I would ditch either of those before I would stop using Speedplay pedals. I’m that convinced.
This film is from Peloton’s website. It’s an interesting look at some American cycling manufacturing including Speedplay.
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@frank
Wow - I disabled adblock plus to have a look at CT after you wrote this. Nearly had a fit there's so much happening.
Do you people seriously run a browser without an ad blocker installed? Whenever I use my wife's iPad and look at, say, a news site, I'm reminded what the internet really looks like with no filter.
I ought to write a Reverence article for AdBlock. Put as many ads on here as you like, frank. I'm not going to see them anyway.
The reason I went with iClics instead of Speedplays is because I couldn't find the SPs in a good color.
@frank
Hmmmm... I think timing it differently would be more dodgy. Timing your post to look like there's no conflict of interest infers that there's a conflict of interest.
I like the Reverence articles as it is my "second opinion" versus my LBS who are very set in their ways when it comes to certain components. As for the objectivity of reviewing sponsored items...My wife blogs and she gets items to review all the time; only the best gets written about - crap reviews equals crap credibility and the Keeper's are yet to do us wrong! Keep up the great job lads and keep the Reverence articles coming!
@DerHoggz
+1 badge to you. Have have come far in a short time, my son.
@frank
I did this for a few rides. More of an unconscious motion. The last time I pushed off with my unclipped foot was a morning with a bit of dew still on the roads. Light turns green, and I proceed to push off, only to have my foot slip and consequently slamming my twig and berries on the top tube. In an effort to stay with the system, I did some googlin and found these. Might be hype, might be worth the $18. Basically leave on coffee covers. Covers
@Jay
Velominati, matey, is all about passion. And once you add passion to the equation, unbiased goes out the door. We love this shit. That's the beauty of it. We embrace it. We're just like you: excited about bike and all the stuff that comes along with it. We love the history of some parts, hate the newness of others, love the newness of others yet. Maybe we're wrong, hopefully we're right, but we're probably somewhere in the middel and at least all you lot are here to help us keep our shit straight when it comes to all three of those things.
Reverence is reserved for the little things that get us through this sport. The things that carry me through the completely shit ride I had today and still make me want to climb on the bike again tomorrow.
Like I said at the beginning of this particular element of the discussion, we Keepers just write about what we love. We have some specific categories we put stuff in, but in the end all the articles here are just stuff we love. We have integrity, we've invested not only money but a huge amount of time, love, and passion into this place and we're not going to give that up to make a buck. (It would have to be a LOT of bucks get into the black, but who cares.) The article (as Marcus kindly pointed out - fuck you) is basically bullshit and the value comes from all of you. Except Marcus. And Maybe Minion. (Ah, I'm kidding, I love you nobheads.)
Thanks.
@frank
Well. I change my Avatar to a sweary Englishman and you expect me to take that kind of crap from Wanker C**ts like you?
You fucking love us because we make you look normal. What you don't realise is how hard that is when you're a nine foot tall monomaniac who eats things normal people can't pronounce (stroepwaffeln? Get the fuck off) and thinks a fun night in is sitting on your living room floor lacing Belgian rims to English hubs. Just buy a fucking trek already so we can get back to what we're good at; insulting the attractiveness of the copulation partners of the country in which we don't reside, cleaning our bikes and posting pics of the Assos girl (please Merckx Victoria Pendleton needs a job... just sayin).
Try and imagine what your life would be like without me or Marcus. I'm still laughing about that crack at bretto over taking kids tot eh pub to get into fights with C**ts who swear in front of them.
@minion
Oh lord I had forgotten about that. Genius work there. What is it going to take to get you idiots to Belgium next spring?
Oooh, a tasty can of worms I've opened there...
First let me say that was absolutely not meant to impugn anyone's integrity, cast a sideways glance, raise an eyebrow or suggest they are not bona fide opinions - I don't believe I did imply that, but if it has been taken that way then I apologise.
Second, I have absolutely no problem with the Keepers getting all the free shit they possibly can, nor do I have any issue with whatever they deem necessary to justify the time, expense and effort they put in to the site.
Having said that, maybe I am taking it too seriously but I have views about these ethical issues because that's my profession. I have grappled with these things as a journalist and executive for organisations like the ABC and in particular at Associated Press, which as an independent news agency has incredible sensitivity to such subjects. At a simple level it meant not accepting freebies of any kind, even ones you weren't writing about, and paying for seats on private planes with politicians or celebrities or not being allowed to cover the story, even if every other person on the plane accepted the free seat and the PR company you were dealing with had no idea what or how to charge you.
And we're talking about film or music reviews here, not presidential investigations.
But I've also worked in less ethical places, and I've done reviews of things based on free dinners, shows and things and it is very difficult, even for a professional journalist to not be influenced by such things. And more to the point it is impossible to prove you are not influenced by such things. I might review a restaurant to which I had been invited by the owner, and perhaps I had been there before and really liked the food, but the very fact I wrote the review is a form of bias by doing that restaurant, rather than the one across the road which had not invited me.
Frank mentioned the Fizik and De Feet articles. I didn't mention them but they were exactly the pieces I had in mind, for the reasons he noted. I'm sure there was no obligation to write a review for any sponsor and I have no doubt the opinions were genuinely held. All I am saying is that as a professional journalist it makes my nostrils twitch when I see editorial copy about advertising sponsors, anywhere - here or in The New York Times, it doesn't matter.
I would rather see a straightforward review saying "The nice people at XYZ Inc sent us this stuff because we like them and they like us. I've actually been using their kit for years but here's a review of this particular piece which I've had on my bike for three months/ three years/ since 1974."
As I think Frank also said just above this, the Velominati site is about passion and the Reverence articles are for those special bits of stuff the writers love - it's not meant to be an unbiased review. That's fair enough. But to my mind it even more suggests that there should be a division between Reviews and Reverence, or to put it another way that the passion is kept identifiably separate from the commercial, or anything that appears to be commercial. And I state again, I have absolutely no problem with having commercial stuff here, I just don't like seeing the lines blurred.
There's a cliche in business that for every customer who complains there are 9 more who don't, and that's where you have a problem. Yes, those of us who have been on the site and know the people either in person or virtually can have complete faith in them, but are the Keepers doing this just for the 100 or so regular posters, or is there a bigger picture ? My assumption is that there is, otherwise why start to have commercial relationships ? And in that case, for every one of us who reads an article and thinks "Yes I have complete faith in Frank/Marko/Gianni etc" there may be 20, 50, 100 more who read it without knowing them and think it was a load of sponsored advertorial the same as on any other website.
The site has gained significant attention. Sponsors and relationships have started appearing, and IIRC correctly from Frank the site does indeed have an incredibly large amount of web traffic, an order of magnitude more than the numbers who post here. I would be delighted for the Keepers if they can turn that into something which rewards the time they have put in and the vision they have shared.
But if there is indeed a business plan or a desire/need to put the site on a more financially sound footing (which I do not begrudge or bemoan in any way) then that sort of thing is going to become ever more important and it is a good thing to lay down some principles earlier rather than later. That's certainly the spirit in which my observations are intended.