Tires, goop, and being "in cars"

Since what I wanted to write about can't be written about because it didn't happen yet, I have to dip into a topic that I shoulda written about some time ago.

Back in September of two ought eleven, I bought my first MAXXIS 2.4 Ardent.  I was more than pleased with the tire's performance on my rigid single speed.  Fast rolling, plenty of volume, obnoxiously huge logos...

As happy as I was with this shift in my front tire paradigm, I requested sponsorship from MAXXIS for the two ought twelve season.  Aside from a short stint on a prototype MAXXIS 29'er DH tire, I ran the Ardent 2.4 exclusively all year long.

I should probably knock on wood when I say this, but I never flatted the Ardent up front once.  Not one flat over sixteen plus months.  That makes me happy.  My previous front tire of choice had let me down multiple times in the past.  To be fair, the Ardent is @50 grams heavier than that tire, but its rolling resistance feels lower, so I just ignore the scale.  To be even fairer, I ran my previous selection for the greater part of five years, so exposure time-wise I realize my results are scientifically skewed.  That said, there were plenty of moments over the course of last "season" when I felt the tire smash against the rim at my preferred pressure of 16.9 PSI and nothing happened more than a bitten lower lip.
Well, there was one tiny hole in my tire after last year's Trans-Sylvania Epic that I didn't even notice until I got home days later that sealed right up with a little jiggling.  I wasn't terribly surprised since TSE eats tire for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and late night snacks.

I would be slightly remiss to give my tires credit for an almost entirely flat free-season.

I can't remember when I started running Slime Pro in my tires.  It's been some time, but my luck with it has me sticking to it in two ought thirteen.

How has it been working for me?

Tire sealant is like a deer whistle on your car.  If you ever saw a deer running away from the side of the road holding his hooves to his ears screaming in discomfort, you would know your money was well spent at Auto Zone.

But you won't see that.

You'll never know how many small holes and nicks in your tire are sealed with the mysterious liquid sloshing around inside your rubber donuts.  The only time you know it works is when you get a larger cut, sticky liquid spews all about, and somehow you roll away with a sealed tire and a smile.

And sometimes the cut is too big.  My only flat that I had to address last year was on Little French Gulch at the Breck Epic.  I have now flatted my rear tire there two of the four times I have descended it in a dangerous manner.  That's a 50% failure rate, which means that if we go down it this year, I may just slow down a little bit.

This is the only photo of Little French Gulch I could find (in thirty seconds of searching).

image stolen from here

This person is going the wrong way.  Also, Little French Gulch gets worse the further you go down.

Anyways, I'm getting off topic here.

The one thing I do notice about Slime Pro is that is does not dry out as quickly as the sealant I was formerly using.  I'll remove a tire, carefully slurp up as much sealant as possible, toss it under my workbench, and months later the inside of the tire is still moist.  I have yet to pull a dried-up alien booger out of my tire since I started using Slime Pro.

So, if I were grading sealant on the deer whistle scale, I've had one collision, one close call, and an unknown amount of deer running off into the woods in absolute ear agony.

Tomorrow I'm out the door early for a dentist appointment, so I'm skipping the blahging.  Since I'm trying to squeeze this cleaning in before I start work at 9:00AM, I'm driving my car tomorrow to the appointment and then work.  That means at 5:10PM tomorrw, I will be in rush hour traffic with all the other people in cars driving in a wintery mix which always ensures carmageddon in the streets of Charlotte.

Last week when I rode home in the cold rain past all the stopped traffic, I was singing this song:



I don't think I'll be singing tomorrow.