Help - Triple vs. Compact & loads of hills

[RolliePollie]

I ran some numbers through sheldon browns calculator. If the formatting of the table messes up this is a summary:

1. On your old bike your lowest gear was a 30/26 = 31.5 gear inches.

2. On the new bike your lowest gear is a 34/25 = 35.7 gear inches.

This is just the kind of explanation I needed to see! So...looks to me like I'd be walking up hills with the new bike.

It seems reasonable to buy the bike anyway and then switch out the gears. But I think I'll look at some other bikes instead of buying the Felt just because it's such a good price. The price might not look so great after I figure in the modifications.