Originally Posted by dynaryder
You can still change the gearing on a Nexus,just swap the chainrings.
And which part of DC do you live in? Obviously not NW. Plenty of hills around Cathedral. The two routes I commute into work are almost all hills;maybe 10% of each is flat ground.
There are "hills" like you can find in DC and many other cities, and then there are the walls that they call hills like some roads in cities like SanFran and Pittsburgh. A 300% range is sufficient for normal hills but may still leave you over geared for the walls.
Cleveland only has a few hills in and out of the river valley so a normal hub gear would work great and I can manage a fixed gear. But if I rode the walls in Pittsburgh I would definately want a Schlumpf with hub gear for some serious gear ranges.
Craig