Originally Posted by
TiHabanero
Tourist in MSN, I did do the creature comfort thing this summer and it proved not to my liking. The only comfort items I include now are an air mattress and camp stool. I do not consider a tent to be a creature comfort thing.
In response to 28mm tires, I started touring in 1977 on 1.125 (1-1/8) inch tires. Road a lot of gravel roads along with pavement. Yesterday I took the bike out for a short run, spotted some single-track and went for an adventure. Tree roots and soft stuff was dismount time, otherwise very enjoyable. It can be assumed that back in the day I didn't know anything about tire width and did the old "run what ya brung" thing and it worked out.
This time around I know about tire width and am starting to regress a bit and move toward the narrower side of life.
28mm tires should be fine on smooth pavement. Rough or broken pavement or chip seal, not so much.
My light touring bike has 37mm wide tires, great on pavement, acceptable on rail trail or tow path gravel. My randonneuring bike has 32mm, my road bike 28mm. My other touring bikes have wider than 37mm.
Last year before I took my light touring bike on a tour, I added a suspension stem (Kinekt) and suspension seatpost (Redshift) to it, very happy with those upgrades. But I suspect you would cringe at the weight of those add ons. With those additions, my 37mm tire bike rides about as smooth or maybe slightly smoother than my 57mm tire bike without suspension.