The last peice of the puzzle was to move over the front 32T middle chain ring to the left sde of the crank arms and that allowed the rear cassette to go from 12-32T with ease and no chain drop. In the process of swapping the chainring, I decided to leave the 22T ring on, firstly because because if the 32/32 wasn't enough for climbing, I could either manually move it to the 22T or if I find that I DO need the 22/32, I could just shorten the chain and drop the 32T front ring. I went in conservative and used the 22T front ring. On the climb with the 22T, I never needed the 32T in the rear, so t makes me think that the 32T front will probably be enough especially once I get stronger and some better skills get added. I took the Klein 1x7 out today and quite frankly if lived up to all of my expectations and does what I wanted it to do, for my bench mark climb that I have been using as the reference for the other bikes, and ny surprise of the bikes thati climbed this section, the Klein was indeed the slowest, by about 15 seconds.
As far as riding this 25 year old Klein Attitude, I can really feel how much things have changed. The Fox fork has maybe 80mm of travel, the 28" RaceFace bars feel narrow compared to the 32" modern bars. As mentioned earlier in the thread, Kleins are know to be stiff...I-beam stiff..Consult your doctor in 4 hours stiff. I am just thankful that i had on a saddle that has some give. The other geometry that really stood out was how steep the headtube angle is, in doing some research, it is about 71* depending on size. I will say the Klein Death Grip 2.35" tires are awesome in the soft Tahoe dryyyyyy moondust.
Yes, the Attitude Race is a bit small for me..I prefer to say, it is nimble or tossible.