I finally flipped a coin and put the strip on the right side. Man, those things are a beast to mount - any you better wear gloves!. We went riding in about 6 - 8in of snow yesterday. Where the snow is deep, the front begins to plow around. That will stabilize if you speed up, but then any little deflection or hidden obstacle will spit you off. Once into the trees, where the snow was not so deep the tires were great. Amazing traction . You can motor right over piles of angled logs that would give you the cold sweats with regular knobbies.
One fly in the ointment: Inspecting my bike today, I noticed that I threw at least one stud on the rear and about six or seven more (all along the outermost knobs) have been loosened to some extent and will probably end up pulling out on future rides. Kind of a bummer for the first ride on a $300 tire :(. I think this may have been my own stupid fault for spinning the tire when I got stuck in a rut (I think there might have been some rocks underneath the snow cover). Rocks can be rough on these things. On the other hand everyone else in the group were riding the "old" Trelleborgs and did not seem to lose any studs, and we all rode the same trails. Mine are from the first batch of the "new" Trelleborg (made by Mitas in the Czech Republic). Like I say, it was probably my own damn fault, but I'll be interested to see what other new users report.