Even on the gravel, I was getting a bit of auto steer. Out on the ride – The first thing I noticed was how fast these tires rolled on pavement. When I measured them the next day, I had 13.5 psi in the front and 16.5 in the rear. I just gassed them up nice and hard, to get the beads set. I hadn’t paid too much attention to how much air that I had in the tires. I’ve got a bit of asphalt road between home and the gravel, so I went out with the bike lit up like a christmas tree and a reflective vest over my jean jacket on a nice cool summer night with a half moon rising in the southern sky. My first test of the Supercells was a night ride out on the local gravel trail. (Never spent any time on Black Floyds, but I’m a big fan of the Pink variety) The ride experience with those types of tires, is the reason that we’re somewhat hopeful that the (4′ wide) Supercell might be a good option for both the beach and the boulevard. I’ve ridden the (4.9″ wide) Vee Apache Fat Slicks on the beach and I’ve also spent some time on (3,5″ wide) Vee Speedsters way back in the day. Over the last few years, I’ve also had some experience with fat slicks. For one, it’s old school and two, they provide enough float coupled with very low rolling resistance and that works really well for riding the third coast….and three self steer is meaningless on the beach and four – all three kinds of traction have a smaller role while beach riding. On beach rides, I tend to run a Larry up front and an old worn Endomorph in the rear on these wheels for a few simple reasons. The tire mounted is 101 mm wide and as you can see in the picture (below) is about the same size as a Surly Larry mounted on the same rim. We like tires with spunk, so we mounted them up on a set of Fatback Umma 90mm rims. I carefully cut the tape, but I must have let my guard down, because when I tore open, the plastic bag, the folded wire bead tire uncoiled and whapped me right in the face in a classic bit of slapstick comedy. They came shipped in plastic bags that were taped together. They both weighed in at an identical 1760 grams each. The Supercells are wire bead and have (eek!) 30 tpi casings. We wanted to see if we might shed some light on how these babies, would do on the beach, along with some asphalt and gravel loaded touring….commuting, joy rides, and the like. The one and only, Pistil Pete asked about this tire and after our editorial staff took a look at them on the interwebz, we decided to pull the trigger and bought a set for $49 each.

Origin 8 scout 29er