I've never had anything but a triple, from when I was in Jr. High and used it to do collections for a paper route. The Schwinn Sierra was a Schwinn Continental with a triple--maybe it was one of the first. I wish Shimano made a triple as good as my old Avocet triple. I hate having no option other than 30T for a 'lil chainring. T/A in the 80s offered more options for road bikes than Shimano now has. If there's a hill anywhere by you that you can't make it up on a road bike but you could on the cheapest mtn bike off the rack, than you're a victim of the latest technology in triples--they're not as good as what we had 20-years ago.