Had the bike out for the first time for real today. Up here it's mostly glacial moraine (an enormous pile of gravel and sand), so much of this particular trail has between 3 and 9 inches of loose sand on top. It was wet today, and everything was chewed up by horse hooves. The single track is a lot better, but I stuck to the wider stuff. The wide tires really were very effective here, and I think it would have been a real slog on narrower tires.
I thought the presta valves were kind of a dumb idea and pointless on rims this wide while I was airing them up, but they suddenly made a lot of sense when I was on the trail and wanted to air down. They are super easy to get at; I didn't even have to get off the bike to do it. If nothing else, I think one advantage of the big tires is that they provide something of a simple adjustable suspension. Fine tuning the pressure is quick and tool free and makes a big difference. After on the fly adjustments I ended up down around 5 or 6 psi, and I'd go lower for snow.
I hadn't considered that transporting the bike might pose some issues since most racks are set up for conventional tires. I wanted to get a hitch mount rack, but they seemed to be a lot more expensive than I expected (this seems to be a recurring theme), and then I started thinking about salt spray in the winter. So I looked at roof racks, and grumbled at the price some more. And then I said eff it, let's see if it'll fit in the back of the hatch. Surprisingly, it fit really easily with the front wheel off. Slip it into an old motorcycle cover and it slides right in the back and holds all the grime in, and then I whipped up some heavy vinyl pedal covers so that I'd stop raking my shins with the pins and worrying about the car interior.