On Thursday, December 21, 2017 at 9:28:55 PM UTC-8, Andre Jute wrote:
On Friday, December 22, 2017 at 1:12:27 AM UTC, AMuzi wrote:
[non team player comments removed]

https://www.bikerumor.com/2017/12/20...up-against-26/

[sarcasm removed]

--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org/
Open every day since 1 April, 1971

Aw, ****. The balloon tyre is resurrected again. Let's see now, it was resurrected as a pavement cruiser in the 'fifties, again at the invention of the mountain bikes in the 'sixties/'seventies when some in Jobst's crowd who weren't as hardarsed as he got tired of riding road bikes off the tarmac, again in the '90s when the leading German Baukast asked Schwalbe to design a tyre that would obviate the unreliable front strut suspension and Schwalbe came up with the Big Apple, and now these incompetent* ******s want to pretend it is all new again? Come on, pull the other one. I ride a Utopia Kranich, which was designed around the then non-existent tyre that would become the Big Apple. I've been doing it for ten years.

*This, from the article Muzi referenced, proves that either the product manager is incompetent as an engineer as well as a marketer, or that the reporter misquoted him, proving his own incompetence:
"Earlier this year at Saddle Drive, Salsa’s Senior Product Manager Joe Meiser said he had been able to run lower pressures on the 27.5″ fat bike tires due to their stiffer side wall and felt that it improved traction on groomed snow trails. It should also stand to reason that lower, stiffer sidewalls will result in better cornering performance on hard pack trails throughout the year."

Nope. Other way round. A soft sidewall keeps more of the stiffer rolling surface in contact with the road, with advantages that surely a bicycle product manager and a bicycle "journalist" shouldn't need spelling out. Here I describe the nett gain in glee
http://thorncyclesforum.co.uk/index.php?topic=3798.0
and you'll find lots more relevant information in the rest of the thread.

BTW, GTF off the groomed snow trails with a bike. They are groomed for a reason, and its not for un-grooming them with a bike. I'm very conflicted when it comes to bikes on walking or skiing trails. I understand that resorts or parks need to jack up revenue and that bikes are less harmful than, say, horses -- but there is still value to a quiet trail where all you hear is footfalls or pole plants, singing birds, etc. No rattling fat bikes whipping by.

-- Jay Beattie.