Quote Originally Posted by KnottedYet View Post
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Ride your bike. If clipless freak you out, don't force yourself. Get a pedal wrench and learn to use it, change back and forth, and do what you want and when you want. They are not required. They are not a badge of courage. They do not mark you in some mystic way.

They are only pedals.

Ride.
I am certainly riding I know they are not required and are not some mystic badge. What I really want to do is to get past this anxiety I have from my previous experience and evaluate them on their own merit. Perhaps, I will love them more than chocolate, or less than soy milk (which I can't stand), but I want that decision to be based on a real evaluation and not some remaining fear from a failed experiment tried much too early in my development as a cyclist.

For me, fear builds when I avoid something - the quickest way to defuse that is simple. Just. Do. It. Indeed, they are only pedals, and trying out the double-sided SPDs is my way of turning them into just that - pedals.

Murieen, I wish that I could dismount on the left side - but my body just refuses to do that - probably because of that foot surgery - it is either a flexibility problem or some unconscious way of protecting that foot & ankle.

Knotted - you have the greatest signature lines - just wanted to say that