Cleats for Cycling Dummies

Note the lack of "adjustment screws," Cecilia...

We're going quick and dirty today, mostly because we want to get out on the road for the team-building bike ride before it starts to rain.  Almost all the Antisocial Network staffers are cyclists, and a quick 25 miles with their office buds can get the day started just right, Some, of course, are more familiar with their equipment, but by this point most of them are smart enough to recognize the error when someone asks "How to Adjust the Tension on Bicycle Cleats." You can't say the same for Cecilia Harsch and the Demand Media content editors at Livestrong.com, however...

Harsch, who clearly has no idea what she's talking about, opens by "explaining" that

"Bicycle cleats, used in combination with clips on the bottom of bicycle shoes, secure your feet to the pedals. Adjust the tension on your bicycle cleats to engage and disengage your feet to and from the pedals without difficulty."

What a rush of stupidity! The office pool suggests that Cecilia hasn't ridden a bicycle in at least twenty years and has never used clipless pedals (note the term "clipless," Cece). Of course, someone with at least some exposure to clipless pedals would have opened by telling the OQ, "Cleats are not adjustable, but pedals are."
Harsch, on the other hand, blathers on:

"Find the tension set screw on the bicycle cleats. Todd Downs of 'Bicycling' magazine says you can typically find the adjustment screw on the back of the cleat."

Well, no, Todd didn't say that. If she'd actually listened to the video she referenced (which is no longer online), she'd have heard Downs say,

"...an adjustable set screw, usually found somewhere on the back of the pedal."

That's right: Harsch, clearly unfamiliar with clipless pedals, thinks that the mechanism found on the bicycle is the cleat. In that, she's dead wrong: the cleat is the replaceable metal or plastic component of the clipless pedal system that is fixed to the sole of the shoe. No cleat has a tension adjustment, most pedals do have tension adjustment. Cecilia's insistence on prattling about adjusting the cleat – even to the point of changing the word "pedal" to "cleat" when she transcribed the Downs video – is all we needed to identify her as our Dumbass of the Day... again.

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