"We’re now struggling with all the component choices. The biggest considerations for us are reliability, serviceability, and ease of travel (eg, I'll be able to break it down and rebuild it on trips with little risk of screwing something up). Weight-weenie-ism isn’t a primary goal, but we do like to climb, so it's not irrelevant either."

This was one of the OP's initial statements.

Here are are a some questions for him.

1. What type of riders are you? Do you like to poke along and smell the roses at 10-12 mph or do you prefer to ride a little faster 14-16 or even faster 18+.

2. Do you spin 90+ rpm or slog along at 70 rpm.

3. How do you corner, slow and careful or hammer around corners.

4. How do you climb, super low gears grinding up the hills or up out of the saddle attacking the hills.

5. How do you travel with the tandem, fly, drive, motor home etc.

6. How critical is the bike weight, are you targeting a total weight of under 30 pounds are something more like 35+ pounds.

We just went through this exercise back in May and if you look at my recent post that shows our Calfee with the new Shimano cranks you can see our results.

Wayne

Answers to these questions will help determine what kind of components, fork etc will best meet your specific needs.