sleepy_tired said:
As far as pot holes and shitty concrete goes... just go around them. You don't have to plow through crap you see on the road. Your tire contact patch is only about the size of a quarter. That is all the smooth pavement you need.
Assuming there *is* any smooth pavement within the path you have to take on the road. (for instance, if you're riding on the roads with traffic passing you at their speeds, which you can't match for either technical or legal reasons, and the part of the road you're on has patches of unavoidable debris or holes, etc).
That said, some time back, after breaking the crown of my suspension fork on the SB Cruiser trike, and riding for a short time with a single-crown rigid fork that began to bend at the crown from braking forces, I ended up building a rigid dual-crown fork for it, and it still rides about as well as it did before--it makes some difference towards the negative, but not as much as I expected. (and the fork has had no problems from forces applied to it, either).
The rear end, which is the heaviest part, even when not loaded with cargo or a dog, has much smaller wheels and no suspension, and it takes a beating (have broken rims and even axles)...I'd love to just install suspension on those wheels...but it is not nearly that easy (or I would have done it long ago).