Originally Posted by DrIsotope

Embracing the notion that "the best way" is to simply cram as many gears as possible onto a bicycle sounds a bit to me like a marketing success. If memory serves me, the entire bicycling world made it through the better part of a century with less than 10 speeds, and many today still manage to get by with even just one. I guess they're all... not being their best?

There is no best way to ride a bicycle. Shaving weight, adding gears, chasing marginal gains, these are all just diversions to all but the last 0.01%. I'm not a part of that percentage point. If having half the gears of the other guy makes me X% slower over X distance... so what? I put a couple hundred miles on my SSCX every month-- not to be the fastest, not to try to set some kind of record, real or imagined. I don't own a bicycle that has it's capabilities limited by the number of gears it has. They're bikes. I ride them. It's all good.