All,
Thanks for your responses. I will answer all in one response. My Sequoia has a 11-25 cassette. Thus if I can ride my hills in 30/24 then I should be okay with 34/27. Using Sheldon Brown's calculator and gear inches it matches BluesDawg answer. I do go west to ride. I ride in PA with colleagues from work on Saturday and Sunday mornings and we have plenty of hills. The team actually seeks out hills as part of the training. However I do have one knee that needs to be fixed at some point and thus spinning needs to win out over crunching. It appears to me from my research and how I ride, if I get a compact double I may be spending time shifting between the 50 and 34 as 39 on my triple is where I spend most of my time. Thus a compact double looks to be in order and triple will serve as a back up.