Originally Posted by
Miele Man
Ah, a fellow after my own heart. LOL
I have an MTB that I put a drop-bar and bar-end shifters on. It has a 24-38-48 triple crankset. Most of the time it wears 26" x 1.5" smooth tires. It has 9-cogs in back. That cassette was made up from two Sunrace 9-speed cassettes and is a 11 - 19 corncob. I love it on the gently rolling hills some of my routes have.
Cheers
I rode 50-40-30 x 13-14-15-16-17-18-19-21 in the 8 speed era: low like 42x28 for mountain rides west of Boulder, CO and 13-19 straight block for plains east.
Currently it's 50-39-30 x 13-14-15-16-17-18-19-21-23-26, although I'm getting old and probably want a smaller third ring for long rides in the Santa Cruz and Diablo Mountains.
In 2016 I rode a 200 mile loop including Mt Hamilton and Mt Diablo. With the new bike lane on 580 it'd be cool to get back in shape and ride a bigger loop hitting the three highest paved peaks in the San Francisco Bay Area including Mt. Tamalpais. You want a lower gear for mountains when you'll be riding more than a few hours out and back.