A lot of the triples I see on road bikes combine a “road plus granny” setup such as 52-42-30 with a tight rear cluster, resulting in a lot of small jumps but no really LOW gears. One still has to go out and purchase a 12-28 or 12-32 to get a 1:1 or lower ratio, and that sometimes (often) means buying a new rear derailleur, too, so one has adequate wrap-up capacity rather than running a chain that could accidentally blow the system apart from being too short for an accidental cross-chain shift (big outer chainring to big cog). I managed to just get my old Chorus 10-spd to work with the old medium length Chorus derailleur and a 50-34 in front and a cobbled together 12-29 in back, but it took some experimentation that most folks would rather not mess with. Likewise setting up our Co-Motion tandem with a 12-36 off road cassette and a new Shadow derailleur. It works, but it took work to get it that way.

What’s good about the new Campy stuff is that it is purpose-built to provide about a 1:1 ratio out of the box. No fiddling required.

On a serious tour when you have your legs and your ass as your only reliable friends, one can’t have a low enough gear. A well designed triple is a good idea. My recollection is they went out of fashion due to lousy shifting, poor Q, and ego.

I recall a time when I could transport all my worldly goods in a Japanese pickup. I left a bike behind once because there was simply no room for it. Now I need an 18-wheeler just to fetch the damn’ bikes.

And yes, nada is precisely what I merit in nearly all situations. After a quarter century of trying to turn me into a passable facsimile of a human being, Herself deserves all the jewelry she can carry.

But I like John Schubert’s notion about the utility of low gears, outlined in the 2010 Buyers’ Guide from Adventure Cyclist:

“At some point on a long tour, you’ll encounter the perfectly bad confluence of events: a steep hill, a sore butt, and low blood sugar.”

John recommends a gear between 20 and 25 inches “for that moment on tour when the hill is two miles long and you’re already tired.”

The 34×32 low end served up by Apex gave me 28.7 gear inches on a Jamis Aurora Elite, with 175mm cranks and 700×32 tires. This ol’ dog needs more lovin’ than that when the going gets steep. Shoot, some of my cyclo-cross bikes go 34×28, though 38×26 used to be the norm. And I’m not carrying any weight on a ‘cross bike, unless you count the Large Irish Ass (LIA).