The shoes with cleats that attach to the pedals are very good - it is surprising how much extra effort you can get by lifting the pedals up although I find it tiring because, I guess, I am not used to it. However, on arrival at the summit I allowed the bike to come to a natural stop on the small incline up to the view point and forgot to release my shoes from the pedals - so the bike and I fell over very ungracefully. You have to preempt stopping otherwise there is nothing you can do other than fall off. Thankfully no damage was done: I was more worried about the bike than myself.
It was very cold on the way back - my feet were freezing. After warming up I took the dog for her customary run, barefoot of course. Barefoot doesn't work for cycling, though: nowhere to attach the cleats!
So nice having 18 gears: 9 on the rear axle and 2 on the crank. The table below gives the resulting gear ratios. You are not supposed to have the chain at opposite extremes - this is called cross chaining and is shown yellow in the table. So that leaves 16 gears. And some of those ratios are so close that, really, you somewhat less than 16 gears left. The ratio of the minimum to maximum gear ratio is 3.74.
But still it is a whole lot better than my previous bike (5 gears) and they change so smoothly with the Sora handlebar controls.
Trip stats:
21.43 miles
42.9 mph max (the downhill near the YH turnoff on the back road)
11.6 mph avg
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