My favourite bike bits website wormed its way back into my affections with a super efficient reply to my “er, where’s my bottom bracket and money?” email. It’s good that they did because I’ve noticed my tyre wearing out. This is the problem with riding every day. Things break and wear out. While I’ll leave a mountain bike in bits for a while as I wait for new bits (or the money to get them) stuff on the bike I ride to work needs sorting fast. Otherwise I’d have to get the bus, and that’d never do. At least now I can feel like buying a new tyre from then again.
This shouldn’t be a place for product placement but it’s hard to write about bikes without talking about bike parts so I’m going to go ahead and mention the tyres. It was the biggest change I made to my commuter bike when I swapped from my old policy of using worn-out mountain bike tyres to actually buying slicks. The change was exciting. I went from constant punctures (it seems that if a mountain bike tyre has had all the knobbles worn off there’s a fair chance it’s quite thin and anything spikier than a cigarette butt will go straight through, especially in the wet. Yes, I was as surprised as you…) to virtually none for ages. I changed from dodgy rolling resistance to smoothly gliding along and from slipping on tyres not designed to be slick, to the grip that good German tyre technology gives you (they have carbon and silica in the compound, you know. Does that make it a carbon-wheeled bike?). It was certainly worth giving in when the bike shop salesman wondered why I’d said I hated spending more on tyres for my commuter bike than my mountain bike, he simply asked how long I spent on each of them in a month...
There were, as with anything, problems. I now feel like I have to be careful with my wheels, as they lack their 2” of rubber padding. Some of the fun jumps off speed ramps and bunny hops on and off curbs have been scaled back now and I ride the bike less like a play bike and more like a road bike. The speed makes up for it all, and I have another bike at home if I want to play on street furniture. I also seem to have constant problems with the sidewalls getting worn, but I have to think that’s down to the abuse the back wheel gets in the bike racks at work. A slight buckle and lazy truing and the brake blocks rub on the tyre, so I can’t really blame the tyre itself for giving up eventually.
The biggest problem was nearly losing a friend over the tyres. I recommend them to anyone looking for a good slick for mountain bike wheels, but they are a right bitch to fit (they’ve reduced my tyre lever stock considerable as they snap them for fun). I don’t think I’d made that quite clear when one friend bought them. Luckily I was in the shower when he rang to shout at me about it (and probably end our friendship) half way through fitting them. I missed the call and our friendship is intact, at least until he has to replace them.
When a manager at work was talking loudly about the new bike he’d bought (a mountain bike which’ll only ever see tarmac) I bit my tongue to stop myself recommending the same tyres. I need my job and setting him up for a tyre wrestling session might have not been the best idea. Luckily he saved me from having to hold my breath any longer by continuing about how he preferred knobbly tyres and wouldn’t dream of getting slicks. On the roads? That’s just silly.
A
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