I just went through a whole back and forth thing about gears on my new road bike, too. I ended up swaping the rear cassette to a 12-27 so I could have a little better climbing gear and it's fabulous. Sounds like you have found a good temporay solution, considering you knee problem - (What's wrong BTW. I had some knee pain in the past that I "cured" with resistance training. ). Your LBS sounds really great. I love mine, too.


Check out this site- it will let you plug in your chainring sizes and cassette cog sizes - and you can compare different senarios, if you want to:

http://www.sheldonbrown.com/gears