Keep in mind that a bike handles very differently when loaded for touring. It's the difficult thing about test riding touring bikes, shops almost never have them set up for test rides how you will be using it on tour, with 4 panniers and a lot of weight. The gearing that seems adequate for riding around the block unloaded will be a different story when your grinding up a mountain pass with 30lbs of gear. If you get the masi see how much the shop will charge to swap out the crankset for something like this:

http://www.velo-orange.com/suoldlotr.html