I'm not going to provide specific tire recommendations, but I ride "gravel" and single-track quiet a bit on my Roadini. I still remember that time in the 1990s when I was riding with Bridgestone-sponsored cyclist Eric House, and we all showed up in the East Bay proud of ourselves for riding road bikes on a Grant ride. Grant showed up on a fixie with 35mm tires and proceeded to outride us all on and off road.
A few principles: - The lighter the rider, the smaller the tire you can get away with. At 140 pounds, I can ride fire roads with 25mm tires (or even 23, back when Michelin 23s were $10/pop!) - Tread or no tread doesn't matter as much as rider skill and speed. - Rider skill cannot be disentangled from bike fit. If the bike doesn't fit, you will find stuff scary that you can actually ride if the bike fit. I once accidentally raised my seat too high and discovered that stuff I could easily ride suddenly became hard! - The longer the ride and the steeper the climb, the more important weight becomes. I can ride big heavy tires if I'm only going to go downhill because a car did most of the work. But if I have to do a lot of climbing (some of which turns into hiking inevitably if you ride in mountainous areas), the lighter the bike the better off you are. - You can drop tire pressure far more than most tire pressure calculators will tell you to. I can run 700x40 tires measuring 38mm at 25psi (the Rene Herse calculator will recommend 33psi) when I'm riding off pavement. On the pavement that same pressure will feel inefficient. I go so far as to carry a pressure gauge to drop tire pressure at the trail head and pump up the tires when I transition off a dirt descent onto pavement for the ride home. - Bigger tires affect handling - one reason I don't ride with as big a tire as I can get away with is that you lose some agility. Frequently I find that being able to steer precisely and quickly offsets the inability to plow through some obstacle head on. What I do notice is that most people don't like to underbike. They will make comments that I won't be able to do a ride on my 25mm tires and then be all surprised when I show up and do the ride. But when I'm touring I'm not going to bring 3 different bikes, so I just push the limits and go slower and occasionally depend on pulling a spare tire out of my saddle bag if a tire were to shred during a tour (which can happen even if you're not riding off pavement). -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rbw-owners-bunch/b4235fc2-a25d-457b-99fe-7dbbf0763e9en%40googlegroups.com.
