If was a little overcast today and I put in a good 20 miles yesterday so I went to the local bike shops for pedal straps. Man, the bike shops were crowded today! It was still nice to get out and explore some of the latest bike stuff out there though.
Anyway, back to the pedal straps. At the end of the riding season last year one of my original pedal clips broke. I removed it and continued my ride and have been riding with just one pedal clip since then (not really a good setup).
My recumbent rider friend told me about Power Grips and that he really liked them. 
I have ridden his bent and have used them for a few miles and they seemed to work pretty well. I found them at REI and Performance but the two other local bike shops that I went to did not have them.
Well, I just put them on tonight. It was not all that easy to put them on especially since I was trying to use them with my existing pedal reflectors. As it turns out, I just had to sacrifice the reflectors (at least temporarily) for the pedal straps. The company says that you can order pedal reflectors specifically for these straps but I don’t know if I want to do that yet or not. The straps were a little expensive too ($25 at Performance).
Anyway, I finally got the straps installed and they seem pretty nice. I can’t give a total endorsement until I’ve used them for a while. What I do like is that they are very easy to get out of and I have had problems getting out of my old pedal clips pretty often. I have fallen a few times just because I couldn’t get my foot out of the clip in time. I’ve never fallen while riding it’s usually when I am already stopped but still clipped in then just shift or loose my balance (more embarrassing than anything else really).
Besides for being able to get out of them a little easier, if you want them a little tighter (for more power on the upstroke) you can push your foot farther forward.
I think that these are going to work out pretty well. I’ll let you know if they don’t or if there is anything else significant to mention after I have used them for a while.
Here’s an update on the Power Grips pedal straps.
I’ve had a chance to use these for quite a few rides now and they have been excellent!
They are easy to get into and (more importantly) easy to get out of – fast when necessary.
I know that some bikers prefer riding shoes with built in clips but these pedal straps work just fine for me.
The only thing that I don’t like is that I had to give up my pedal reflectors to install them and I haven’t checked into getting the customized pedal reflectors that Power Grips offer yet. It’s so easy to forget about it once they are on (and the percentage of time that I ride at night is really pretty small anyway).
OK, well, now that I have used the Power Grips pedal straps for much longer now I guess that I have to revise my opinion.
I have found these pedal straps to be very difficult to get in to especially when I am on a ride where I am on and off of my bike a lot.
They are not to bad to get into sometimes but at times it is just hard to get the strap around your shoe even when you approach from the side (as recommended).
They are fine in every other way and are really easy to get out of, but the difficulty in getting into them has made me reverse my earlier opinion and I believe that I will be replacing them with the original stock pedal straps that came with my bike soon.
OK, I never got around to replacing the Power Grips pedal straps this year and I need to update this post with my latest review of them.
They can be a little hard to get on as I explained above but I have found that I have gotten much better at it and maybe they are a little easier to get on now that they’ve worn in and softened up a little.
Any pedal clip can be a little difficult if you are hopping on and off of your bike often but I have found that the vast majority of my riding is not like that. Once in a while I may be in a conjested area or doing a lot of photos or video and hopping on and off of my bike a lot, but in those situations I just do not worry about the pedal clips and use the other side of the pedals.
Anyway, I still use the Power Grips and I do find them to be a very nice pedal clip.