Frankly, in my case, I don't need more than, say, 5 cogs total, even for the sort of climbing I do. Gears of 85", 75", 70", 65", and 60" would let me ride comfortably, on pavement, on all but 1 ride in 10; and adding a granny ring as you have would take care of that. Drop each gear by 5" and it would be fine for my dirt riding. After all, I get around Albuquerque just fine on my 3 fixies.
But a creeping perfectionism, philosophical and "aesthetic" as much as practical has led me to adopt 10 cogs on my 1 derailleur bike (the Matthews) so that I can get those tiny little 1-tooth jumps all the way from 86" down to 44" on the big (42 t) ring (there is a 24 t bailout ring, too). Why? Because 10 cogs are possible, and therefore it's fun in a sort of anxious way to fretfully calculate just how perfectly adapted to my riding I can get all 10 of them. It passes the time and it's less dangerous than drinking or chasing women. On Sat, Aug 19, 2017 at 10:46 AM, George Schick <bhim...@gmail.com> wrote: > [...] > > All of this is to bring into question just why most of us really need all > of those gears. Sure, there are those who live in mountainous regions who > couldn't get by without triple chainrings, especially off-road mountain > bikers. And what the highest and lowest gears are is a matter of age and > personal preference. But the 9,10, & 11 tooth cassettes - really? Seems > like another one of those things that the industry transposed to the > consumer population. Racers would need that kind of set up since they have > to match their speed with the rest of pack (and SIS shifting for the > constant and rapid speed adjustments). But the rest of us - I just don't > see it. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
