djb

hey there old geezer ;-)
I have a friend who is extremely smart, but has this "big ring" thing in his head about equating to it being admirable or tough or who knows what, but something along the lines of being harder and maybe thinking it makes him stronger--I dont know. Ive tried mentioning the whole chain line thing, but both him and his wife just dont get it, and still have this odd "accomplishment" thing about being in the big ring, cross chaining be damned. Heck, I doubt even the argument of actually wasting a few watts due to cross chaining would make a difference.
People are funny, and these dear friends also never clean their drivetrains, put copious chain lube right on top of filthy grit encrusted chains and let the overflow just sit and go everywhere......you can lead a horse to water....

another story, recently someone I met told me of how they changed their cassette from a 11-28 to a 11-34 to help climbing, but then continued to tell me that the change did mean that they could not go down hill as fast, as they ran out of gears earlier.
I explained patiently that a 11t is a 11t, no matter a 11-19 or 11-40, but nope, thats what they knew and that was that.....

I'm not as old as you, but am clearly in the "gear inch" crowd, prefer to use g.i , and as a tourer, learned a long time ago to understand gearing to help me in real life with touring weight and mountain riding.

*Now I do freely admit that as gearing nerds, we can rightly claim to help people with insomnia, as our blah blah about this and that can put people to sleep.....but I look at this as a positive social function, too many people have sleep behavioral problems, so we are doing our best to help these poor blurry eyed folks.