Quote Originally Posted by GreatPaws View Post
Don't worry, OP, I can top any dumb question.

You experienced guys talk about rings. I only see "numbers on the handlebar".

How am I supposed to figure out which "ring" I'm in while shifting and not run into a tree or something while I"m twisted around trying to see what I'm shifting into?

I see "1,2,3" on the left and "1,2,3,4,5,6,7" on the right.

So if I"m staying the the left- 2 gear, that's the middle ring? And some of those overlap with left 1 and 3- is that what you're saying Yelsel?
I wrote a post for this, I guess it disappeared?

The numbers make it easy to remember. "1x1" is the easiest gear, which you use to climb the steepest hills; "3x7" is the hardest gear / used for downhills. So lower numbers = easier to pedal.

You can stay in the 2 (middle) chainring, and use all 1-7 cogs. Then you probably have about 3 unique higher gears, 3x5, 3x6, and 3x7. This is big chainring / small cog. And you will use the ~3 unique gears on the low end, 1x3, 1x2, 1x1; the small chainring / large cogs.

With a double, you overlap about one-third to nearly half the gears between the two chainrings, depending on setup. So you need to decide whether to shift between rings near the middle of the cogset, or whether to stay in one chainring, use all the cogs, then jump halfway up the large cog to continue in higher gears (or halfway down the smaller cog to continue in lower gears).

You need to be turning the pedals to shift gears; but the lighter you pedal, the less wear you put on the chains and cogs. This means shifting down before you absolutely need to on a hill... and trying to "soft pedal" a stroke without much pressure while shifting. This is in theory, I'm not suave enough to do a soft pedal yet!

********

The first bicycles had the crankshaft on the front tire. Every revolution of the pedals moved the bike one (front) tire diameter. This is why the "highboys" were developed -- the bikes with the huge front wheel and tiny back wheel -- you needed a front wheel with a huge diameter if you wanted to move fast. Needless to say, these were generally only used by racontuering young men for racing, and were not generally appreciated by the rest of the traveling public.

The invention of the safety (modern) bicycle with chainrings and cogs changed that. With one pedal revolution, the bike moves forward the ratio of the diameter of the front chainwheel divided by the back cog. So a small chainwheel divided by a large cog means you move forward a little bit for one pedal revolution -- good for climbing uphill. And a large chainwheel divided by a small cog means that the bike moves forward a lot with one pedal revolution -- good for going fast on the flats and for going downhill.

The invention of the safety bicycle made traveling long distances easily available to the urban public. In particular it gave women access to more freedom... traveling farther, the invention of bloomers, and part of the spark for the suffragette and women's vote movements. Not to mention, the start of the US highway system, which was started for bike travel (commerce was primarily through trains).

Anyway, you can play with the chainring / cog ratios on Sheldon Brown's site. The gear inches are a direct division of the chainring diameter by the cog diameter. The gain ratio scales this by the length of the cranks -- otherwise you need to take into account the diameter of the pedal revolution given by the crank radius. You can also use different cadences to figure out the speed you will attain on flat ground using different gears. If you don't have a cadence meter, you can aim for a particular speed in a gear on the flats, and know you are reaching the cadence you are aiming for.

http://www.sheldonbrown.com/gears/
You should be able to look up your bike specs online and put in your current chainset and cog setup.

I am a real dork -- I *love* playing with the gearing thing. I'm trying to figure out whether I want lower gears on my 1x9 commuter -- right now 11/26 cogs -- and this is so fun to play with. I might just put a 12/30 on just because it would be fun to figure out how to change out the derailleur.