If I ever build a dedicated shopping bike I think I'll try no-retention again, but this time without pinned pedals; it was the pins that annoyed me when I tried platforms a couple of years ago because they were always holding the shoe (and I bought a nice pair of platform cycling shoes) in the wrong places and made it hard to shift the soles to the right places. But something like MKS Urbans, perhaps with half clips, sounds very likely.
I tend to mash gears, which means I often will pull back or up -- briefly -- on inclines or when turning into winds; retention has obvious advantages here and, in fact, the reason I went back to SPDs after a couple of years commuting with clips and straps but no cleats on my rubber soled Timberlands and Basses and so on was that I was always pulling the shoes out of the straps or, if the straps were tight, pulling my feet out of the shoes. But I agree, for convenience there's nothing like a comfortable, sturdy street shoe with sufficiently stiff or thick sole and sufficiently wide and flat pedal for all-round convenience. I do find that SPDs, even on my road bike, allow me the next best thing, since I can walk pretty easily in my several pairs of mtb SPD shoes. Since I follow the Chinese custom (inherited from Chin/Am ex-wife) of not wearing shoes indoors (ick!!) it's almost as easy to slip into SPDs as into street shoes when I go out for a ride. -- Speaking of which, recall the time 3-4 years ago when I had to hike home ~5 miles in my SPD shoes after a sharp stick poked a big hole in y rear tubless tire (and all my plugs just disappeared into the cavity; later got some *big* plugs). I made it, but man, decent civvie shoes would have been more comfortable. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rbw-owners-bunch/CALuTfgtu7raqa9WoTTm8kJracEmUoKdc%3DOVPng%2B9rzLvsfUyhg%40mail.gmail.com.