Yes that's it

Just got a new crank in for the bike. I'll have to check chainline on it so see if I need a different spindle length but 36/22 with a 11-34 cassette should give me a decent range for touring in hilly areas, right?

No trouble with the low but I'll bet there will be times when you'll want a higher gear when riding with the wind, even slight downgrades or when you're feeling it.
Btw, I've ridden the Bike 4 trails a few times, great place to ride

This is my campandgoslow bike. I'd rather the gearing not get high enough than not get low enough. After a quick test fit I found that I need a shorter spindle for the new crank.
I've bike portions of the Elroy Sparta trail but I'd love to do the whole thing.

IME the three enemies are weight, volume, and wind resistance. The more volume, the more weight because larger containers are heavier. Keeping every thing behind the rider lowers wind resistance, but may compromise handling. One has to experiment. Except for the panniers, light weight hiking gear will help with the weight, but not the cost. I first concentrate on volume, lower volume items also being lighter. Another approach is simply to buy lower volume and thus lighter panniers and just use gear which will fit in them. And yeah, low gearing rules. Many fun places to tour also feature climbing.

That is a lower gear than my light or medium touring bikes, I doubt you would need to go lower. That might spin out on long shallow downhills, but those do not come along very often. Having low enough tears is more important than having the high ones for touring.

Although I’m a proponent of having what some would consider stupid gearing, I doubt that you’ll have a problem on your proposed route. You can get up into some nasty hills along that route but only if you go off-route. The Bike 4 trails are old rail beds and are about as flat as you can get. At various times in my life I’ve ridden all of them with and without loads. I doubt you‘ll need your lowest gear at all.

Although I know it is unfashionable, you can have both a gear that is high enough and one that is low enough***COUGH***triple. Here’s the gearing that I have on my touring bike compared to yours. I spend most of my time in the middle of the cassette and the large ring in the 60 to 75 gear inch range.

That's a nice set up.

In the future I probably will go triple. Finding the drop shifter at a decent price is my biggest reason why not. I may go to bar ends if the shifters start giving me problems but I've honestly never had a problem with any of my Shimano drop bar shifters

One solution is to keep your present brifters and find an old pair of downtube friction shifters (and a clamp with bosses) so you can shift the triple.
Added advantage is if your rear brifter fails you have a back up.

A single front bar-end shifter would work too if you can find a second hand one

Micro shift has bar end shifters on Amazon for a reasonable price and that's probably the route I would go

This is my setup from about 10 years ago with just rear panniers:



Tent on the left side and mat on the right, attached with bungee chords to the front rack.
You could also use some mesh bag or tightening straps to attach them even better if you do not trust the bungee chords and the surface is very bumpy.

When I built up my rando bike in early 2016, I had a rear brifter but no shifter for the front. As a temporary measure I put on a vintage front friction shifter (Huret). Then started thinking about what front shifter to install for permanent use. That was nine years ago.

That front shifter is still in use, no longer considered temporary.



I had to use a file on the cable fitting to fit it in the shifter, they used different fittings on cables half a century ago.

There is a plus side to using a friction front shifter with a triple crank, if you have an indexed front shifter and a mis-matched front derailleur, it can be difficult to get the shifter to work just right for shifting onto the middle chainring. But a friction (unindexed) shifter has no problem with that. Eventually you develop muscle memory to be able to shift smoothly to the middle chain ring.



For a year or maybe two Lance Armstrong used a friction front shifter on his racing bikes instead of a brifter.

I think this is a great solution.
I tried friction shifting on rear bar-ends from 9-speed, but found it a bit clumsy; maybe the short lever, the close cog spacing or both. For front shifting, I find friction a bit smoother, but index is good too. Downtube shifters have shorter cables, so theoretically better.

I read somewhere that Lance used a friction shifter to save weight. I think his definition of Touring in France was a bit different than mine!

I prefer friction-shifting front triples; trimming a front derailleur with a brifter is perhaps my least favorite cycling activity.

So did Marco Pantani. I remember watching him climb L’Alpe d’Huez and wondering why he kept reaching down. Later, a shop in town got a hold of one of his bikes and hung it on the wall.

Yup. I remember seeing a photo of him and the team he was on all on bikes, he was the only one with a friction downtube front shifter. But when you think about it, with a double crank, there is no reason to index, the lever is all the way forward or all the way back.

I hated rear friction shifting, once I discovered index shifting for the rear there was no going back. But the front, half of my shifts are to the middle ring, that is the only lever position that I had to train my hand and wrist to shift to that was not all the way to the stop. So, I do not mind friction front shifting with a triple.

On my current touring bike, I also use a friction bar end shifter for my front derailleur and a standard 10 speed brifter for my rear derailleur. Getting that left hand brifter tuned just right for a triple crank and maintaining it can be a pain the arse. It can be so finicky and unforgiving that I threw on a friction Microshift bar end for that triple as a short trial and it's still on there 3 years later. Before Shimano added that trim position on their triple brifter, it wasn't too difficult to maintain but when they added the additional click, you're always fiddling with the cable tension and limit screw..... and now it's time you can all poo poo my mechanic abilities and tell me that your newer Shimano triple brifter works flawlessly and without need to fiddle.

^^^ Nah, you’re good! 🤗

Wont be me, I put my friction down tube shifter on six years before you did, and I even use a vintage French Huret Allvit shifter, not a new fangled one.

But, I have never used a Shimano brifter, mine are Campy. On my rando bike the Campy 10 speed shifter is mated with a Tektro left brake lever.

Do electronic shifters automagically trim? That would be cool.

I'm sure the main 3 groupset manufacturers don't even offer a triple front in electronic. In fact not a lot of mechanical triples still available, probably Shimano low end Sora or Claris might still be available ?

Claris triple fd is what I was looking at. I've personally never had an issue getting trims right on an indexed front shifter setup. A friction is less adjusting in the shop and more skill to use on road.

The only triple I have owned with an indexed front shifter is a 1994 Bridgestone MB-6. It is nearly stock, so the shifter, front derailleur and front crank are all from the same group, thus designed to play well with each other. I have no difficulty shifting it, but I often have to push the lever a hair beyond the stop to get it to shift well to the middle or small ring.

My other triple crank bikes do not have front derailleurs that are matched to the crank, I use friction downtube or friction bar end shifters and often have to over-shift a bit and then back off when shifting to the middle ring. I am used to doing that, it just takes an extra second to make the shift. On those three bikes I am using front derailers by Campy, Suntour and FSA, all three are designed for use on a double crank.

My road bike, A 2017(?) Raleigh Grand Prix has a Campy Veloce group with a double crank and double front derailleur, the front shifter is a triple. I bought a front triple derailleur for it so that I could put on a Campy triple that I have in storage on the bike, but before I got around to that I learned that the derailleur was designed for a 39T middle ring and my Campy triple has a 42T middle ring. So, I never tried to install that in anticipation that it would not work well.

The older MTB triples and shifters were no problem, it's when the third generation STI brifters came about that I lost my tech skills.