Thanks for the great replies. It is good to know that others have and are also considering lowering their gears. I have a mountain bike crank on my road bike now with 48,38.28 rings. The 48 ring is used as a guard to keep from dropping the chain off the 38 ring and the 28 ring is mostly used as a dog tooth so that if the chain drops to the inside it will not fall off all the rings.

My days of pushing a 53/11 never materialized. My hat is off to anyone that can use those gears. I will never need anything bigger than a 38 tooth on the front. A 36 would probably do great for me. Maybe one day I will run across such a crank set.

Like others have mentioned I would benefit by having a triple just so that I could have a better chain line.