Bob: It's good you've still got your sense of humor and can an account of your musings as you tumbled. What you describe sounds like "river run rock". It's all nice & smooth & similar sized from thousands of years of tumbling down a water course. Negotiating this stuff is like walking or riding on ball bearings. Tough at best. I doubt you'd find any tire what would perform well on this stuff.
True knobbies (the big ol' honkin' square blocks) need something to grab onto, like sand, soft soil, etc. An inverted tread like the Conti T&C is a wonderful all around tire. One of my touring buds rides those precisely so he can just take off the pavement without a thought and only has to check tire pressure once in a while. Man-made gravel as used for road surfacing is crushed to size & so is fairly sharp and tends to lock together a bit. While it's a bit mushy and probably abrasive on tires, it's easier to ride than the stuff you describe. I'd stick with what you've got, accept that river run is a lousy surface and avoid if possible or walk thru if not. dougP On Oct 13, 5:04 pm, Bob Cooper <robertcoo...@frontiernet.net> wrote: > Advice sought about riding in the gravel: > > Conventional wisdom has it that, if the road surface is harder than > the tire, then knobbies are not an advantage, and a slick tire offers > more grip. > > Today I fell on a steep ascent -- about 20+ percent -- on a road > covered in creek gravel the size of robins’ eggs. (I know: I didn’t > pick my line sagely.) > > As I spun though the air, looking up at the tops of the trees and at > my feet, which were up there with the trees, I had a moment to reflect > on the conventional wisdom. > > I know that a lot of subscribers to this list do a lot of mixed > terrain riding, and I was wondering, if anyone had an opinion about > the use of knobbies versus slicks -- or inverted-tread tires -- for > this application. > > Continental Town and Country, 2.1 inch, 25 psi. (What I had today.) > > Versus, for example, Specialized Ground Control II, 1.95 inch, same > psi. (What I have in the parts bin.) > > Any advice appreciated, > > Bob “Love Those Lonely, Gravel Roads” Cooper -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bu...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch?hl=en.
