Originally Posted by
unterhausen
my touring bike (in progress, story of my life) is going to have a double. Not because I'm particularly strong, but because I don't have a big chainring. The truth is, I don't use super high gears. My crank has a 42 tooth big chainring, which doesn't sound like much but a 42x11 is a higher gear than the 52x14 we all used BITD. I live in the mountains and I rarely find a use for the 11 in the back. This is a pretty common combination on current mountain bikes. My small chainring is a 24 or something like that, but if I ever go touring I'll have something like a 36 in the back. I wonder if this is what the bike shop person was suggesting to the OP. My LBS suggested I go with this combination. My MTB may have a single chainring with the SRAM system. That seems like a pretty good idea.
You sound a lot like the way I thought about this. I found 42t was big enough and found 24t was small enough. I saw 11t wasn’t needed and 36t was. So as a double I was fine with 42, 24 x 12-36, strongly putting me in the double camp until I added the 45t and I still say I have a double just a 45,42 + granny. Talking about transitioning between the 42 and the 24 its not silky smooth like the 45 and the 42, but it’s not that bad and I don’t have a Rene Herse. I go to the granny when I need something lower than 31GI dropping to the granny range. Everyone talks about the lowest gear but I like the spread of GI I get off that wide cassette. Around here we have rolling hills and having that range is more important than the absolute lowest gear.
I think there is a difference in a double and triple in the conventional way and a double +granny or a single +granny I would call the 42,24 a single + granny. That might be where some of the confusion is coming from.
There is an evolutionary process most go thru and it is so based around individual needs. There are some serious bike tourist here and also a lot of folks that have touring bikes and are more of the weekend warriors getting started touring. Fitness is important but shouldn’t discourage anyone from giving touring and touring bikes a try. I sometimes worry there are a lot of lurkers here thinking about doing a 100 mile weekend tour or even shorter and they are not sure if they want to jump into this. I read nuns philosophy a little different and would say a touring bike has such a wide range of gears just about anyone could feel safe taking off with a good deal of load on the bike and average abilities and get from point A to B and back over some mild terrain and have a lot of fun doing it. I’m quite happy chugging away in the gear that feels right for me and time is the great equalizer half the speed, just plan on twice the time or half the distance. At least you are moving.