An excess of groceries
The Archetypes I’d put on the midlifecrisismobile wore out pretty fast (after 3k miles the DS brake track on the rear wheel was becoming alarmingly concave, and I’d dented the front rim when I hit a large rock 80k into a 400k last spring (I finished the 400k, of course, I just didn’t use the front brake all that often after the collision)) and the Swobo Del Norte rims I had as emergency spares were not exactly what I’d call light, so when I wore through the rear tire on the emergency spares I decided I’d look around for a new set of lightish rims and tires.
I’d been interested in trying tubular tires for a while, so after successfully doing rube goldberg-style tubeless on the born-again Trek I was pretty much just looking for an excuse to make the jump.
A pair of tubular rims for $20 (Wolber Profil 20 – 460gm/rim) was a pretty good excuse, as was the pair of Kenda Volare tires I found on ebay for $29. You can tell it’s going to be a budget wheelbuild when the tubular glue (two tubes @ $4) are 15% of the cost of the wheels, and that the cost of the entire wheelset was less than the cost to replace the worn Archetype would have been. Yes, the tubular tires are ⅞“ instead of the 1⅛” that my beloved 28mm Resist Nomads are, but the praise for the ride of tubular tires was so embarrassingly effuse that I just had to try that size out.
They aren’t bad. They ride noticeably different than the wider tires I prefer (they’re so narrow that when I lean the bicycle over it feels like it’s going to turn turtle on me, and don’t have much resistance to wander – a problem when the front end isn’t loaded – and they weep air a lot faster than I’d like) but the ride is still very good and they seem to be slightly faster than the Nomads (already a very fast tire in my experience) are.
But I still haven’t ridden them on a brevet. No, instead I’ve been taking them shopping, which is not exactly the intended use for an fast(ish) randonneuse. But this weekend I’ll load up the mlcm with a bottle of Stans (my toolroll is overkill for tubular repair; a bottle of stans, syringe, patchkit, needle+thread, and minitool is somewhat smaller than the toolkit I carry for tubeless or tubed clinchers) and try to run it up to Ripplebrook (under the logic that I’ll never be more than about 10 miles away from a telephone so if I tear a tube in half I’ll be able to walk to help in finite time) one or two times.
Who knows, if the tires are faster I might be able to break 8 hours and then think about riding Hylo Sailor! in a week or so. (And maybe pigs will fly. In any case, it will be a fun experiment.)