Originally Posted by schmoab
Hiyo Silver---I live in Broomfield too.
Now I would go ahead and get the Kona except that it's a dual chainring. They said they can put a 34/50 up front and I would have 12-25 on the rear. I don't plan on carrying a bunch of gear on long tours, but I do have to carry my 215 pounds up some really big hills (McCaslin, etc) and I'm not in that great of shape yet. I'm not sure what the max cassette you can put on a 105, but if I could get it up to a 30 or so I might be satisfied with the gear selection on the Kona. Otherwise I might need to look at Deore-equipped bikes only.
I should mention that my concerns are 1. mainly road riding 2. occassional dirt/gravel 3. drop bars are a must 4. I like to keep my cadence fairly high going uphill.
Welcome. We're about the same size. I need to add more miles this year. I've only been cyclocommuting, so if you want to go riding some time PM me.
I would NOT recommend the 12:25. I had a 30.42.52 x 12:23 that was too high when winter came. It was fine for spring and summer. But riding up interlocken with winter headwinds was just too much. I swapped that out to a 26.42.54x 12:27 and that works fine. Well I've never tried the hill up to Level 3 as it looks too steep. The hill from interlocken up to the airport is doable but you have to mash instead of spin.
If you need, I can figure out the GI numbers for you.
And yes, when I bought my Giant, Performance swapped out the initial cassette for free. Second change was on my nickel but I have the original rings and cassette.