Comparing Fatness

This past week I was both elated that more snow had arrived and I was singing the blues because it was sooooooo hard to pedal through all that wonderful white fluffy stuff. You have to realize though that my version of the blues involves a huge, continuous smile. I love deep snow, but after this week I am praying for snowmobiles to pack it down some. Hmmmm, knee deep here...



I did a little tire experimentation this week...I was not so happy with the so called "velcro" grip of the Surly Bud tire up front so I had to prove it was worthy. I put on my Surly Larry tires (aka no-traction-in-soft-snow) and flailed around having a great time improving my bike handling skills. Then I put back on the Surly Bud up front (aka serious fatness with squirrel eating knobs) and my Surly Nate out back (aka kung-fu grip).  Both the Fatback (Mr Gump) and the 9:Zero:7 (the Baconator)were used in this little tire shuffle...it's so sad that I had to ride so much to do this.





Was there any comparison? If there was it was laughable to say the least. I think the Larry tires are far superior considering speed aspects on packed roads, but are fairly useless in deep snow for forward momentum and steering control.  The Bud and Nate combo proved that, although not perfect, were far superior in floating through deeper snow as well as in steering and forward propulsion. I went miles (yes miles) further in the deep snow with what seemed to be less effort with Bud/Nate than than Larry/Larry. However the Bud/Nate combo were much slower on hard packed snow...must take a little more POWer to motivate those big lugs over the hardpack.

The velcro grip of the Bud still does not exist in my opinion since it slides around a lot more than I would expect with such a deep lugged monster tire. No worry though since it is also improving my bike handling skills.

Really though, who cares about all this technical crap? The underlying moral here is that I'm having too much fun riding fat bikes. But all this play did result in the Bud/Nate combo being Mr Bacon approved for superior fatness in loose, deep snow!