I ride a 1980 something Schwinn Mangusta 5000 super light weight, aluminum frame road bike with a bio pace sprocket. Some of you road bike geeks will find that interesting, as this is an ellipsis shaped sprocket that supposedly increases efficiency and power and is happily dweeby. Others maybe are still waiting for a story. Anyway, my son Phillip, age seventeen and an upcoming beast, has taken to timing himself on a few routes we share, on my Mangusta. We are, for the moment, competitive on elapsed time, and usually have more to say to each other about how taking on the hills hurts. "Murderous" is my favorite observation from the offspring. Well, how to get faster on thos inclines . . . Sometime back I removed the old fashioned rat-trap pedal straps, but around hilly here soon have realized how helpful they are in stabilizing our feet in the pedals and enabling "spin" in addition to "pump", especially on the climbs. He has taken to the modification easily and so now I have, no doubt, hastened the moment when he will exceed me in this, as well. This gives me great joy. "You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far. Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness; for even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable." - Kahlil Gibran