nauboone,

It surprised me too when I found there were low gears I seldom used. I live on the East side of Portland, OR. FWIW, I used to live on the (very hilly) west side and the 30 gear inches I have now matches the 30 lowest gear in my triple setup. I am running a 39T chainring.

I chose the downtube shifter because I vacillated a long time about how to run bullhorns with reverse levers in the ends of the bars. I had a few choices but one day I was riding along adjusting my FD by fiddling with the barrel adjuster located on my DT braze ons... then it hit me. If that was fine, shifting downtube shifters would be fine too. I am not going to argue they are as convenient as they would be on the bars, just that it doesn't bother me.

As joejack951 has mentioned, one of the easiest and most versatile setups would be to buy a triple crank and set it up the way I have. The chainline is already taken care of for you by the manufacturer, and you can always switch to a double/tripple setup later. joejack951 is correct when he states that 38T is the smallest chainring you can fit on 130BCD, but road triple have the inner ring on 74 BCD if my memory serves. Also, rumor has it that some road cranks don't accept chainrings smaller than 39T. However, I am a little disheartened by road groups, I would go with a MTB crank if I were you. That would let you run 26/36/48 or something similar if you ever wanted to. It is pretty common for touring bikes to have "mountain bike" components. I think shimano fails at marketing in this regard.

joejack951, You don't have a Porsche 944 Turbo, do you? Just curious.

EDIT- But be careful because a mountain crankset with suggested BB for a mountain bike with 135mm rear spacing will have a slightly wider chain line than a road crank by ~5mm... I think. Someone can correct me if I am wrong. Some cranks have suggested BBs for road and mountain listed separately because as I stated before it is normal to run mountain components on road bikes for touring. However, some touring bikes take care of this pseudo-problem by adopting 135mm rear spacing.