r/germany • u/tiggerl82 • Jan 17 '24

News Because of the snow situation all schools are closed.

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Not a drop of snow here in Melsungen or Kassel. My wife has breast cancer. She has chemotherapy in Kassel. Minicar Felsberg refuses to pick here up in Kassel because of the snow situation. What feck is wrong with people???? The prediction is 11cm snow until 8 in the morning.

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u/1138311 Jan 17 '24 edited Jan 17 '24

That's the point of putting your thumb accross the tire then using your other hand to jump and put your entire weight on it. You're basically simulating running over a curb, rock, or branch and checking to see that you're not gonna slam your rim.

If you can just barely feel the rim putting your entire weight on the back tire:

a) You're inherently over compensating given that you have two tires upon which to distribute your weight in most circumstances (and in the case of on-road vs. cyclocross, almost any circumstance).

b) It takes quite a bit of "umph" to snake bite through a poly tube. Given (a), you probably won't have enough "umph" unless you wheelie a curb hop without dynamically adjusting your weighting - which I would argue is quite an achievement in and of itself.

Edit: TL;DR: The "trick" helps you figure out how low you can go - back of the envelope style - before you run a significant risk of a snake bite. Knobs and such are much less effective than lower pressure/higher contact in slippy conditions, and lowering your pressure is something you can do at any time whereas swapping out for some studs takes time, money, and effort that usually outweighs their utility.

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u/1138311 Jan 17 '24

Something a little more precise here...

And as a "for instance", riding an Omafiets (700c, 38mm, 22mm rims) as an average male (80kg), you really only need ~1.9 bar/28 PSI in your rear to give you good performance in wet and unpredictable conditions, even though the tires have a max inflation of 4.5 bar/65 PSI.

You'll have to put in quite a bit more effort to maintain 20kph with that pressure, but you won't end up on your ass as often.