Hola. Let me start off by saying that I'm not too up on biking lingo, so I
apologize if I don't use the correct terminology for what I'm talking
about.
I'm currently riding on a Durango SX:
http://www.jamisbikes.com/bikes/05_durangosx.html
Not the best bike in the world, but pretty cheap. I live in San Francisco,
so I do hit my fair share of hills on a daily basis, but for the most part
I like to just stand up and attack them instead of downshifting and
pedalling while sitting. As such, I never shift down below the 17th gear at
a minimum.
I'm not sure what to call these things. I normally rank the gears by level
of resistance, with first gear being lowest resistance and 21st gear being
the highest. I'm not sure that applies with all of the different
combinations, but essentially I always keep my bike on the biggest
chainring on the gearset (forward), and the smallest few cogs on the
freewheel (rear). I like a fair amount of resistance, even when I climb,
since most of my climbs are relatively brief and thus manageable for my
style of biking. I'm not going to be doing any mountain ascents anytime
soon, so it's most short climbs and long flats for me.
Anyway, I basically only use four or five gear combinations ever, and I'm
curious if it might not be worth my while to get my bike regeared at a shop
or something to just get rid of the gears that I'm not using and replace
them with more gradual gears at the resistances that I use more frequently.
I'm not sure exactly what this would entail; I imagine that at least the
gearset would have to be replaced. Can anyone give me a clue as to whether
or not this would be a good idea for my purposes, and how expensive it'd
be?
I've tried to read up on the subject, but the pages that I've found:
http://www.kenkifer.com/bikepages/touring/gears.htm
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Port/2945/Gears/Gears.html
But they might as well be written in Greek to me. I figure I might stop by
at my local bike shop to see what they have to say about it, but I also
figure it couldn't hurt to ask around here, as well. Thanks for any
responses.