Originally Posted by
operator
Fully loaded touring. Lol. Ride around really slowly everywhere, sounds like real fun.
You were doing just fine until you wrote this. Riding at full speed and seeing only the wheel in front of you isn't everyones idea of fun either. For many people bike touring is fun and a great way to travel and see far more than you would from a car or airplane.
Sure it's slower, they don't care. What they do care about is having gearing low enough to climb hills with a loaded bike and 10-speed road cassettes generally don't do it. MTB cassettes are still 9-speed (SRAM's XX may correct that) so being able to use 9-speed cassettes is important to them.