Perhaps I merely want to justify my large purchase, but this year I am attempting to keep my bike running throughout the cold Wisconsin winter. This isn’t all that difficult if you are dressed properly, but snow and ice makes running with slicks a bit perilous. Luckily, while I was rummaging around in my parents’ basement over thanksgiving, I came across a set of mountain bike tires with sizable knobs. The great thing about the Surly ‘Long Haul Trucker’ (my bike) is that it has smaller diameter tires (26″) than a typical road bike (the same size as a standard mountain bike) and , as it says on my bike’s chain stay, ‘fatties fit fine’, meaning that you can put tires on it that are far wider than standard road bike tires. So, those knobs are keeping me quite safe through the winter. You can’t do that with a Trek!
