And Now For An Even Smaller Wheel...

Actually, they don't look too bad on there, but......

Last week I wrote about the B+ riding experience and that I've been messing with some wheels and now I've been riding these new hoops with 27.5er rubber on 'em. I had to scratch my head and think hard about what bike to put these things on, because I do not have a proper 27.5er rig, or do I....? 

The Sawyer is a cool bike but the thing has a bottom bracket drop of almost nothing. I always felt that as an odd thing when riding this bike. The front end is looooowwwww as well, I suppose it's just like Gary likes it to be. Well, the idea was that whatever amount these smaller hoops dropped the bottom bracket it wasn't going to affect the pedaling in a negative way. No dragging feet in the weeds. At least I hoped so.

It turned out that I was just fine. The 27.5er rubber was not dumping me too low, and I was good to go. It makes me wonder if this bike was supposed to have 26"ers on it from the get go. That would've made sense, in a clunker kind of way. Anywho.......

Riding the 27.5ers are not anything new to me. I rode them several times at Interbike years ago. I never really thought they were anything that different from 26"ers. Your mileage may vary there. The industry made a choice for riders to phase out 26"ers in favor of the "new" wheel size that would be all sparkles and glitter. So here we are with 27.5ers being the "new" 26"ers. That's what I have to to work with, so that's what I have here to test out.

The proper head badge.

And test I did. I found out that these wheels are twitchier than I remember. Nervous feeling. The main thing though is how fast you can spin these up and then how fast they lose that momentum. It was fun to play with for awhile.

Maybe the aspect of these being on a singlespeed was what made this a hamster wheel fest. Spin, spin, spin, coast a bit, spin, spin, spin...... This bike doesn't do this with 29"er wheels, that's for sure. The "coast" part lasts a whole lot longer. That and the roll over abilities are no where near that of 29"ers, and miles away from 29+. I spoke with my friend Grannygear yesterday and we both agreed that 27.5ers will remind you again of why you loved 29"ers in the first place.

But don't let me make you think I didn't have any fun. I did. These wheels just are not for me. In a world where there are 29 inch wheels, I don't have to stay with the smaller sized fare. Now, you may be completely opposite of myself, and that's great. Go knock yerself out with the 27.5ers. There are lots of great choices there.

This brings me to this point: That the difference between 26 inch wheels and 27.5 inch wheels is negligible, but the difference between both of those wheels and 29"ers is very noticeable. So, we aren't losing all that much if 26"ers go away, except that the old bikes have become maybe a sort of dinosaur. That kind of sucks in a way. However; it seems that is how it goes with mountain bikes especially.

Anyway, that's my take on the smaller wheel choice.