Sidi shoes vs Shimano cleats

Tricia wore out her beloved Sidi shoes. Too many miles and too many days just did them in. She's replaced the cleats several times, and even the wonderfully replaceable heal piece. But her ruby-red slippers at last came to their end.

We'd looked for perfectly matching ruby-shaded replacements, but I don't think they make them any more.  Tricia, a woman with white bar tape and a white saddle, decided she'd give white shoes a chance.  Sidi, of course. And they do indeed look marvelous.

It would be silly to get new shoes and not get new cleats, so she bought a pair of Shimano SPD-SL road cleats as well. I installed them to match the placement of her old cleats and figured we were good to go.

Nope.

They wouldn't clip in to her Ultegra pedals. I thought at first maybe they were new and just stiff, so I tried it. No deal. After much frustration, fussing about and looking hard it turned out the problem was the interface between the shoe and cleat. The bottoms of these shoes are more curved than her old shoes. Enough that the cleat bent when I tightened it down, making it impossible to click in.

As far as I know there isn't a custom titanium shim for $189.00 to solve this, so I used a couple of old zinc washers I had, installing them under the front bolt. It took two for each shoe. But it worked well enough that Tricia was able to wear her new shiny white shoes today.

I've joined the Sidi cult.

Tricia and I went to two East Bay bike swaps on Sunday.

I wasn't going to buy anything. Really. At least not much. I got a couple of tires for the commuter bike at a good price. It was all going well. Lots to look at, but really, I didn't need to buy

Then Tricia started looking at shoes at a booth I'd walked past. She couldn't find what she wanted in her size, but as she was going through boxes and such we stumbled on a pair that looked nice, are way cool, and just happened to fit me perfectly. So it's all her fault. Well, not all her fault. All the BikeForums.net folks that just won't shut up about Sidi didn't help me stay strong. So, there I was, pulling out dollars, leaving with shoes.

These aren't just shoes. They come with a shoe bag and two instruction manuals in oddly translated-from-Italian phrases. And stickers. The stickers might have been what really pushed me over the top.

I did, however, at least get Tricia a jersey to punish her for causing me to spend money.

Anyway, I'm in that shoe club now.

And now that I have my cleats mounted and have given them a test spin, I am amazed. They feel so good. All shoes should cradle your feet and make them happy like these do. No wonder there is a Sidi cult.