Originally Posted by rdtompki

Well, we went on a 39 mile ride yesterday and I'm retracting my derranged thoughts about changing the gearing. Of course with less than 100 miles on the tandem and being older folk we've got a lot of improvement ahead of us, but the 24-32 came in real handy as we "handled" the attached elevation profile. We had ridden the climbing portion as part of the Tierra Bella and in defense of our attempt to do this so early in our tandem career I'm blaming the stoker.

It's very difficult to find a 30-40 mile ride in a valley that doesn't have hills and most of the organized 100K and 100 mi. rides will have at least 3000' of climbing. Yesterday's ride was only 1800' according to my GPS, but the quality of the 1800' was a killer. We have another loop that we've done with 1500' of climbing, but the grade is substantially less which makes all the difference.