Thinking back to the days of the Presque Isle Bicycle Club (Erie, PA 1972-77), the "standard" road bike available at the time (think Raleigh Grand Prix) came with a 42-52t cottered crank, 14-28t five speed freewheel, and no Internet to do your shopping. Which meant your local bicycle dealer probably carried 14-30 and 14-32 clusters in stock, although that would also mean replacing the Simplex Prestige on the rear with a Sun Tour GT. A fair amount of bucks for the average rider who'd already spent $125.00 on that bike.
If you wanted to do serious gearing changes to your bike, you first found out from the other guys who did mail order and was reliable, then either borrowed one of their catalogs or ordered your own, then ordered the necessary parts. Which is to say, usually, anything more than that simple freewheel/rear derailleur change was something planned out over about three weeks. Changing chainwheels was fairly well unknown until Sugino showed up on the scene. Yes, there were T/A's available, but nobody in Erie sold bikes that used them, so nobody carried any parts for them in stock.
You had a good climbing bikes if you could do the once a month Presque Isle State Park ride without over stressing yourself. A 17 mile absolutely flat loop, with a 1/2 mile hors catagorie climb from hell to get back out of the park and one the roads back into town.
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Syke
“No one in this world, so far as I know — and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me — has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.”
H.L. Mencken, (1926)