not sure if you are familiar with gear inches, but your 30granny-34rear gives a 24 gear inch low. A bit lower than my present cross bike with 30-32.
As a reference for touring however, my old touring bike originally had about a 25 inch low, but I changed it to about a 22 inch low, which was essentially a "gear" lower, which was very very appreciated when I was fully loaded and in hilly areas.
"44-32-22 with a 12-34"
I personally would find this too low, not that it wouldnt be fine for loaded touring, but more cuz unloaded it really is waaay to low overall. ~I dont like using the 11 and 12 tooths that much, but from my experience with the 50-39-30, I could see a 48-36-26 being a really good touring crank, while still being very useable for allthe unladen riding we do as well.
Thanks for the compliments and also wanted to let those touring know that I decided to end up going with a Sugino XD 600 46-36-24t crank and it was perfect; rarely if never spun out of the top end (maybe that one time when I hit the touring bikes top speed of
41.5mph in Wyoming).
Here are some of the rest of the stats from the ride:
Total mileage: 3743
Average miles per day: 65
Average pace: 13 mph
Hours spent on the bike seat staring at asphalt: 290
Number of days the trip took: 70
Number of days ridding: 58
Longest riding day: 104
Shortest riding day: 32 miles
(technically 5 miles on the last day, but I consider that a parade ride)
Nights spent in a sleeping bag: 42
Flat tires caused by the road: 3
Flat tires caused by me for not performing a proper flat change: 3
Daily calorie consumption goal: 6,000 – 6,500
Favorite junk food: Peanut M&M’s followed by Dairy Queen Blizzards (Chocolate with Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups)
Least favorite junk food: Pop Tarts and most anything fried
(a box of pop tarts for breakfast gives some of the best calorie per $ available)
Body weight loss: about 10%
Total number of website views: 22,250
Busiest day: 2,388
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WordPress Subscribers: 114
Highest blog commenters: Pirate Velo, The Hook, and my Dad
facebook “likes”: 113
facebook monthly active users: 730
facebook post views: 45,434
Total Number of Pictures Taken: 5,192 (12.6 gigabytes)