Looking for a nice hilly ride? Check out the Bike With Pike Westcliffe Adventure next Saturday in my old hometown. The ride, which is a fundraiser for the Frontier Pathways Scenic and Historic Byway, starts in scenic downtown Weirdcliffe and heads to either San Isabel or Colorado City and back, depending upon whether you choose a metric century or the real deal.

The course uses part of the old Hardscrabble Century, albeit in reverse (from Weirdcliffe to Mackenzie Junction). And there is a ton of climbing in both directions — 9,000 feet in the century and 5,900 feet in the metric — which should be an excellent opportunity for folks to debate the relative merits of traditional gearing vs. compact cranksets vs. triple-ring setups, if they have any breath left for idle chit-chat.

If you’re interested, you can register here. Be sure to keep an eye peeled for deer, especially at mile marker six on Highway 96. Stupid buggers love to leap out of nowhere and into the road right about there. I once saw a black bear chugging up a hillside near there, too.

Charley A. writes:

My road bike is a custom Bill Holland steel frame made in late 1992; 53×39 and 12×24 gearing. It has about 70K miles and been well maintained. Do I upgrade or replace? I am not riding the miles I used to and the gearing is getting too long for me. Compact or triple crank if replace? I would like to hear some pro and con on the options.

Any recommendations for Charley? I’d be inclined to keep the Bill Holland and go to a compact crankset, 50×34, maybe add a tooth or two in the rear end as well. But then I never throw anything out. My road and mountain bikes are 15 years old, I have a 26-year-old pickup, and until very recently I still had the second computer I ever owned, a 1993 Apple Quadra 650. Alas, no amount of upgrading could transform that 33MHz beast into a modern machine.