Originally Posted by
abdon
Do you spend a lot of time on the 54/14 combo? That's 101 gear inches, which is adequate for a grocery getter. My touring high setup is 48/11 or 115 gear inches, which gives me a strong cruising speed on flats. A common road bike setup would be 52/11 on 700c or 124 gear inches. I don't have the legs for that.
Gearing is a personal thing and a matter of cadence; some folks sustain higher speeds at higher cadence/lower gearing. I'm a lower cadence kind of guy so 115 gear inches is as high as I go.
48/11 would be cookin' for me on the flats. Heck, that's a good mild-slope downhill gear. Good times. I spin at 60-80 rpm pretty happily, so like you, a statistically taller set of gears is preferable. 53-11 for me on downhills since I live in the NW. Takes a little more than a 5% grade to aid me in spinning that ratio out (120 rpm or so), otherwise, 80-ish rpm in that gear combo allows me to have a lot of fun on downhills just outside of town here (after spinning a 39-28 up it for a bit...).