I'll admit to having kind of lost steam on the last entry — but hey, Roger was able to read ahead for his dinner party beef Strogonoff, and that's all I was aiming for anyway. Perhaps in a couple of days I'll go back and clean up both my atrocious 'tude and my atrocious transitions. For now, though, you're victim to my short attention span and my new toy!

At 1am I decided it would be a good idea to install my new pedals tonight, so I rolled my bike in from the garage onto my freshly vacuumed bedroom carpet and dug in. I'd splurgily bought Speedplays at Mike's a few weeks ago but never installed them as things constantly came up (this ride with these friends, that ride with those friends) where I preferred a trusty albeit rusty bike setup to a newer and shinier one. I'd even procured the loan of a pedal wrench just for the purpose — but only tonight did the mood strike me to embark on, first, the epic battle for the extraction of the old pedals; second, the next few weeks' trial period of getting used to a new system.

So far I've just been clipping in and out astride the bike in my room, jean hems rolled up and trying hard to avoid rolling into the graceful clawed feet of my wooden desk. Initial thoughts:

• The platform on the cleat seems thicker than on those of the SPDs, raising the whole foot higher above the pedal surface. Typically people like putting the pedal to the metal, or having close contact for good power transfer and road feel. But for those with short legs, I'll be glad of the extra extension.
  
• Mmmm, the float. Twenty-two is too young to complain about aching knees.
  
• It's now impossible to disengage by turning the foot outward, as was my bad habit (you can catch the heel in the rear spokes — I did, briefly, once) heretofore. I have to start instinctively twisting in.
  
• All the cleat screws are Phillips heads, running contrary to 99.73% of bike parts. That means that if I want any chance of repairing on-the-road cleat problems, I'll have to start carrying a screwdriver as well. Pain in the bum.
  
• Somehow I'm missing eight tiny screw nuts from the package. It shouldn't be a problem for the short rides to and from work tomorrow, and hopefully I'll leave the office before 6:30 and stop by the store to figure this out before they close.
  

Exciting!