Biketodetroit

I have a low gear I never use. When I got my bike nine years ago in Colorado Springs, it was assembled by a 20 year old who designed it for a middle-aged racer, and I didn't know enough to realize what he was doing. Soon after I started riding it I changed the gears to give myself a lot more room for error (or fatigue) on the Bay Area hills.
Many cyclists have two front rings to drive the chain, and several rear rings to allow a selection of gears. We all have three front rings, which allows a wider range of gears. My lowest gear is 32/28. That's really low. (Mountain bike have even lower gears, but that doesn't count.) Let's just say that they don't do 32/28 in the Tour de France.
I never use the low gear because it is comforting, or amusing, to know that I have a gear I have never needed, but is always there if I run into something really hard. Well, today I used the granny gear. And this was not even a named summit, just a ridiculously steep road. In Nevada there is so much space that the highways take a long time to gradually ramp up to the summit. The steepest grade was usually 6%, with a couple that went briefly to 8%. Today the grade was 12% for the last 1.5 miles to the top. We here there is worse to come.