Originally Posted by
ironwood
I used to think you needed bicycle shoes and toe clips. I never used the so called clipless peadals. Now I just wear any shoe with platform pedals.
Grant Petersen on the Rivendell site, and in his book, Just Ride, exposes the shoes ruse as just another thing to buy so you look like a racer.
Well some of what Grant says is true, but some isn't. It's just his philosophy but you don't have to buy into it unless you want to. Shoes can be a ruse to look like a racer especially the more expensive carbon fiber wonder shoes, but you can't walk in those shoes. So what Grant is saying is that it's nice to ride a bike somewhere, like to another town, and be able to walk around, and to that I agree. So I wear mountain bike shoes on my road bike and I like the Shimano Multi Use Touring Shoe, but I also have a set of cheaper Nashbar MTB shoes too that work great. I can use those in my clipless or clip pedals, but I also have a pair of road bike shoes dedicated to clip in style with the cleat on the bottom that slides onto the cage and the cage fits a slot built into the cleat so the foot can't slide off the pedal.
But a dedicated shoe allows you to use a pedal to either clip into or for toe straps, even though the two mtb shoes I have don't have the clip style cleats the lugs on the shoes prevent my foot from slipping off the pedals when I use the straps.
There's also a really nice dress shoe for clip style, simply remove the cleat and walk around, but they are expensive; see:
http://www.dromarti.com/index.php?ma...e223417643d0aa They come in brown or black.