This week my bike suffered its first ever mishap. I was coming back from work last Tuesday and all was fine with the universe, until I hit one of Montreal's trademark potholes. God my city sucks for this! I slowed down and checked everything as I was riding, and all seemed cool, so more fear than hurt I thought... wrong. The next morning I'm all ready to head to work, and I notice my bike feels weird as I pick it up. Well of course it felt weird, my rear tire was flat. Boooo !!! Well, this was the trigger I needed to do what I should've done a very long time ago, which is to go from the stock Bontrager Jones ACX 2.125" knobbies of Uber Fatness, +20% to Dirt Raping, Rolling Resistance and Drag Coefficient, to this:
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| Kenda Kwest 1.5" slicks !!! |
I was expecting this smaller and stiffer tire to be a bitch to put on the rims but apparently all my years of BMX have turned me into a tire-changing professional as I took about 15 minutes to get both wheels done. Yay me! I must thank the GT bike company and their near-impossible-to-install BMX tires. Those tires were very good and very tough, but they were tough in every way possible. But back to the Kenda's I got today, as soon as I was done I put on my cycling shoes and headed out. It's a good riding night tonight if a bit hot and humid, and hot and humid near the St.Lawrence means bugs by the crap-ton. But the feeling of these tires... damn! They turned my Trek from an earth-churning tractor to an asphalt-ripping dragster! Why I waited over 3 years to do this is beyond me. I could say it's because I've ridden far more this year than I've have in the couple years before, but as most of my riding is in the city and/or on hard packed trails I had no reason not to change the knobbies for slicks. Just FYI, knobbies are good in very soft terrain or mud. Point Final. But now I feel I've redeemed myself and finally saw the light. The next long ride will be far easier for sure!
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| Extra shot of my baby :) |
Ride slick
o7
2 comments:
I'd be interested to know if anyone can advise... I have knobblys on my Kraken, but since 90% of my journeys are roads/alleyways where the biggest threat is glass (in this town its on virtually every street) I was wondering which would be better for handling said glass... slicks or knobblies?
Actually the slicks have much thicker rubber all around. Knobbies are pretty thin in between the studs and when the tires get used up (which happens fast on asphalt) it takes only a tiny puncture to ruin your ride. But if there's a lot of glass I got only one advice: be very careful!
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