Pedals
There is a pair of pedals on my desk. OneUp Aluminum platforms. Purple, to match the Chris King components I am collecting for a bike I have not yet built. Wide, concave, with pins that grip the sole of whatever shoe you happen to be wearing. No mechanism. No clip. No twist to release.
I bought them in early December. They are for the Salsa Fargo Ti, which exists right now only as a frameset and a collection of parts accumulating in boxes. The bike that is actually in this room, the Zwift Ride on the trainer I have not touched since June, is still wearing clipless pedals.
I am looking at both of them right now. The trainer with the pedals that hurt me. The desk with the pedals that might not.
For years I believed flat pedals meant I was not serious. I heard it from other cyclists, read it in forums, internalized it as fact. But that belief is the same pattern I keep finding everywhere I look: a surface confidence that substitutes for understanding. The best pedals are not the ones that signal legitimacy. The best pedals are the ones that let you ride.
These flats will let me ride. No ankle rotation required. No compensatory movement. No risk calculus at every stoplight. A platform designed for the foot I actually have.
The Fargo Ti is months away from being rideable. The pedals are sitting on my desk beside a trainer I am not using. They are the first decision in this project that starts with the body as it is.
Ken Wake is the author of Thinking Design (forthcoming) and a Professor and Entrepreneur in Residence at Georgetown University. His work explores systems, technology, design, and meaning. Tour de Ken is his weekly log.
