Chainring shift technique when pulling a child in a trailer
Hi. Right now, my family is enjoying a summer vacation in a very hilly area. We've been very happy with the Retrospec two-wheeled trailer we've been using to take our two-year-old with us to the lake and around the area. However, there's one really tricky spot on the road near our rental house that combines a deep ravine, steep on both sides, with a sharp turn at the bottom of the dip. My wife and I are both riding older road bikes (1962 Atala, 1984 Peugeot) that I've retrofitted with modern triple cranksets, upright bars, and friction shifters (3x5 for her, 3x6 for me). We're finding it really challenging to make it up the opposite side of the ravine without going too fast to take the corner with the trailer attached. The extra weight of the trailer makes shifting on the uphill pretty difficult -- I actually broke a chain doing it, a couple days ago -- but if I shift down to the smallest chainring while I'm still on the downhill, I won't have any power coming into the uphill and will lose most of my momentum. What's your shifting technique in a circumstance like this?