I’ve seen motorcycles with skinnier tires than this
The midlifecrisismobile sits at Llewellyn School while the bears romp on the other side of the playground. I was warned about the Nifty Swifty tires earlier, so I pulled them off the bicycle and replaced them with the Col de la Vie spare tires (1.5" or so wide; they make the tires on the xtracycle seem downright spindly) to see if it’s the tires instead of the wheelsize that’s making the bicycle so slow; no matter what it is I can run without spare tires for a week or so until I’ve put enough miles on it to get some idea of how well it will run over long distances.
(Note, also, the two prototype bags on the thing; the prototype 2 handlebar bag, still bristling with pins, is being used as a camera/snack/cellphone/ipod bag, and I’ve got a prototype 0 seatbag that’s got the toolkit and a rolled up raincoat in it. The next iteration ofthe handlebar bag will look much like this prototype – at 250mm × 150mm × 200mm, it holds almost as much rando junk as I carry on the xtracycle – but the next iteration of the seatbag will look more like a Rivendell Nigel Smythe bag (except it will be packcloth instead of tweed, and I’m going to arrange it so it snuggles up tightly against the seatrails instead of dangling down to rock back and forth as I pedal down the line.))
Note that the fender line sucks dead bunnies through a straw, and that the handlebar bag extends far forward of the front wheel centerline. I probably need to buy a nice lugged cyclocross fork (they come in about 20mm longer than this fork) and rerake it into oblivion to push the centerline forward of that bag, but that has to wait until after I sell off a lot more stuff on ebay.