I feel strongly that you're heading in the right direction from your description a big, fat, "slick" tire.

However...while I agree with getting that type of tire, I looked up the tire, and it's $15 / tire - with no mention of flat protection.

I would NEVER go back to the days of riding a tire without good flat protection again. Never. Since I started using tires with flat protection, like the Panaracer TServ's that I have on my bike, I've never gotten a flat from a puncture (gotten a few from a few different defective tubes, or a burr on the inside of my tire rim). It used to be that I'd get 2-3 flats per year - that went to 0 when I got puncture resistant tires.

Unfortunately, the biggest size I could find in a TServ was 1.75" -
http://www.amazon.com/Panaracer-T-Se...anaracer+tserv

Schwalbe has a very good reputation to, I found their Marathon tires for $45/tire on amazon -
http://www.amazon.com/Schwalbe-Marat...thon+26+x+2.00

I realize that $15/tire vs $45/tire sounds like a huge difference in cost. And all I can say is that it's **definitely** worth it - in my opinion. The difference between 2-3 flats a year, and 0 flats per year, was completely worth it for me - even in my broke college student days. (You should still carry flat repair stuff, because it's not impossible to get a flat, but it's way way more difficult.)

If you do some research, there might be other slightly less expensive tires that would work to, I'm not sure - the Panaracer is the one I buy and I've read many good things about the Schwalbe. But I would **never** go back to the days or getting 2-3 flats per year in exchange for saving $60. Like I said - not even when I was a broke college student.

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These are probably to expensive, but fyi, I ran across them and they are 4" pedals -
http://www.specialized.com/us/en/ftb...latform-pedals

$80 though. Just thought I would mention that they exist.

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If you're looking for advice overall, my advice would be between a mountain bike with no suspension - but big 2 inch tires (slicks, like you mentioned, not the knobby kind of tire), or a bike with front suspension but no rear suspension.

People often think of suspension as something that makes your road smoother, but it's really there for doing things like plowing into logs on a mountain bike trail. Usually fatter tires gives you as much suspension as you'd ever need for anything you find on the road, including potholes. Yeah, a skinny tire doesn't like a pothole, but a 2" tire will ride over a basketball sized pothole (in my limited experience).

If one does need suspension front suspension even covers most of that. Even professional mountain bikers often ride with only front suspension (for efficiency reasons).

The drawback of rear suspension that - unless you buy the expensive stuff - it causes you do lose a lot of power to the suspension. I have a $1500 full suspension mountain bike, and there is a very noticeable difference between having the rear suspension on, and having it off (locked out) in the speed that I'm going with the same amount of effort.