Balindamood (above) had good comments, make sure you have enough chain so that if you cross chain, nothing binds or breaks. If your derailleur won't take up all of the slack when you are on the smallest chainring and smallest couple of rear sprockets, don't use those gears.

I also was searching for a lower gear but concluded that I could not pedal fast enough to keep upright if I was much lower than my gearing offered. Thus, I ended my search for a lower lowest gear.

Some people in the search for one lower gear end up with a lot of redundant gears or a combination of gears that is not very convenient. When you really need a lower gear, you certainly must have it. But when you will spend the vast majority of time in a different range of gears (for me that range is 60 to 90 gear inches) you want to make sure that you have a nice set of gears in that range too.

I use a 52/42/24 front and 11/32 Sram eight speed rear, I found that to work quite well and provides a reasonably lowest low gear. I do not use several gears to avoid premature wear on components, but I made sure that if I accidentally use those gears that nothing breaks. I described my gearing in detail in post number nine here:
http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread...rs-for-touring