these days, I'm pushing 60, and way out of shape, and my rides are maybe 10-15 miles around the bike trails in town on a flatbar hybrid 'city bike'. on the flats, I'm usually in somewhere between 68 and 86 gear-inches. my TOP gear is 99 inches and I need a tail wind to even think of getting up there. medium hills that are maybe a block long, I can usually keep in a 40 inch gear, but I have a 30 inch for the longer steep ones. of course, longer/steep to me means 1 mile of 8% grade... and yeah, totally concur re: downhills. if I'm going faster than I can push down a hill, I just relax and enjoy, like you say, but I'll probably keep the pedals moving just to keep the blood circulating .

the bike I did my touring on in my misspent youth was a 1970s steelie '10 speed' (2x5) with campy NR gearing, 42:26 was about the lowest gearing it could cope with. I *wish* I'd had a wide range triple, then I might have done more touring as I really did like getting places on my own power. my longest tour was 9 or 10 days round trip up and back the northern California coast.

crossing whole continents, wow, that boggles my mind. I've never even been able to make the time and commit the effort to doing a trip like that on my motorcycle.