$@!#$@ what gear am i in?

[li10up]

Actually, this advice can be a little dangerous. You should shift your front chainring before you run out of gears in back. If you are in your middle chainring and shift all the way to your largest cog (or sometimes even second largest) in back before shifting to "granny" in front (if you need it), you have a very good chance of dropping your chain to the inside. Been there, done that! It will stop you dead on a climb, making it very hard to get going again once you stop and put your chain back on. Much better is to shift in front only when you're, say, on the third cog in back. It puts much less stress on your drivetrain and you are much less likely to drop your chain.

That's why I said it was overly simplified. Doing what I suggested one time would show the rider that she needed to be in a couple of gears harder in the back (smaller cog). So once she got to the biggest cog she would then know to shift up two gears before droping down into her smallest chainring. This would then naturally lead into knowing when to shift into her smallest chainring without doing the double shifting....a learning process.

[Lise]

I'm with you, mimi. Every bike I've ever owned has had numbers to tell me what gear I'm in. Not the Bianchi. So I do it by feel. I realized I like the numbers because it lets me know how far "up" or "down" I have to go before I need to shift from big to little ring. Doing it by feel is working pretty well.

[xeney]

There are very few hills where I live and I hardly ever shift, so the only time this happens to me on my Bianchi is when my husband has been working on it or riding it and has left it in some weirdo gear and I don't notice until we are on our ride. I can see the front chain ring okay (not that that helps, I think I have been off the middle chain ring once in each direction; the triple is totally wasted on me) but I can't see the rear, so if I really can't tell by feel I just ride ahead of him and make him tell me what gear I'm in.

If I don't start riding some place with hills I should probably sell that bike, because if all I ever use is "middle/middle," with occasional forays into "middle/left of middle" and "middle/right of middle," I could probably get by with a three-speed Raleigh.

[SadieKate]

Xeney, you can always come with me on one of my hill-seeking rides!

[SadieKate]

That's why I said it was overly simplified. Doing what I suggested one time would show the rider that she needed to be in a couple of gears harder in the back (smaller cog). So once she got to the biggest cog she would then know to shift up two gears before droping down into her smallest chainring. This would then naturally lead into knowing when to shift into her smallest chainring without doing the double shifting....a learning process.

I think Emily's advice is excellent. I've met many a rider that did not figure out why they kept dropping their chain -- and many of them would fall on steep climbs as a consequence, not to mention damage to the frame.