Originally Posted by
sstorkel
And what type of 20" tire do you expect to find if you need to buy a replacement in a random small-town sporting goods store? I'm guessing it'll be a knobbie from the "garbage" side of the spectrum. That last time I bought a no-name tire from a sporting goods store, it was showing significant wear after 50-75 miles of riding... on an unloaded bike!
Really: can you honestly say you'd prefer to tour on a bike with one 20" wheel and one 26" or 700c wheel?!? If not, then I stand by my statement: having two different wheel sizes is a disadvantage of this type of bike.
http://www.walmart.com/search/search...h_constraint=0
for the sake of discussion, lets say all you have access to out in BFE is a walmart..;
20, 24 and 26 inch tires. All from the same manufacturer.
As I said before, if you want something particular, you'll need to mail-order and bring it anyway.
incidentally, ill point out the lack of any 700c tires...
Ill also point out that buying good tires to begin with and starting off on a long trip with newish tires makes this whole discussion pointless...