Originally Posted by invisiblehand
Should I be insulted? I think that this idiom is just a figure of speech.
Sorry if you are offended, but I hate it when people use loaded comparisons to skew things thier way. Writing "holding tire width constant, riding with larger wheels is still superior" is akin to saying "Holding diameters and wall thicknesses constant, a steel frame will always be heavier than an aluminum one." True but irrelevant. Anyone who knows how tires function understands that optimum width, for a given load and function, varies with diameter.
As I wrote earlier, there is a folding bike with the 520 size. And I recall that it is made for adults.
Airnimal? I'm quite familliar with them as I do work for Calhoun Cycle and some of my friends have them. If there were a lightweight 520-40 tire, similar to the Panaracer HiRoad folder, available and it fit the bike, I'd think it was a great design. (Despite being aluminum, which is probably less of a bad thing in this case as the bike has suspension and I suspect that most of these won't get as a lot of miles put on them.)
Using fatter tires on the small wheels help but never fully compensate for the limited wheel diameter.
I dissagree. At least when comparing the best 406s to any available 520. Have you tried any of the tires I mentioned in my earlier post? The Apples aren't as fast as the other two, but I have them on my fastest, lightest bike.
you can get decent 520s from Airnimal dealers and the Harris Cyclery. 507s would come in handy if one were riding off-road or wanted something particularly wide and/or knobby. The idea is that the flexibility would be there. And the standard Marathon (24x1.50) is available in 507.
Here again we differ in our opinion as to what constitutes a "decent" tire. I don't want to waste energy pushing a Marathon down the road.
Perhaps we have different notions of what "mini" means.
I was out of line there, sorry. Just because my notion doesn't stretch to 520 doesn't make yours invalid.
I read several posts mentioning Mr. Osell with tandems/recumbents and some recent rides that he and his wife appeared to have sponsered. I understand that he used to have a retail store but closed it sometime around 2001 guessing from some posting dates.
That's about what I'd expect you to find. I'll have to Google him sometime.