[kohagen]

My experience with tubies goes back about 40 years to when I bought a Raleigh Competition for $300 from Brands in Wantagh, NY. That's where my parents bought me my first bike, and which is still there.

The Raleigh came equipped with tubulars, which I thought was a good thing. The pros used them, there's the romance of using handmade Clement Setas for the vaunted ever so smooth ride, the mounting process had a certain mystique about it, etc.

My reality was whenever I had a flat, I wound up throwing away the tire. I tried to fix them, but I could never resew them properly, and they were never the same afterwards. They were more expensive than the clinchers of the day, and I finally tired of the extra expense and went back to clinchers.

My thought process was, I'm never going to race, why do I need the aggravation of throwing out an almost perfectly good tire because it flatted, clinchers are fine, they're easy to fix, you can buy replacement tubes at any bike shop and don't need to replace the tire because it picked up a little piece of glass, I never could glue them properly, etc.

Fast forward these 40 or so years, technology has changed, you can repair a tubie with sealant, people who use them swear by the feel of the ride, the price differential between tubies (I love how spell correct always changes tubies to rubies, tubes, or tubas) and clinchers has dropped, most tubulars don't have to be prestretched, and I now have enough time to pay attention to the gluing process.

In addition, I’ve recently been considering what would happen if I blew out a front tire while going down a Vermont hill at 40+ mph, as I’ve been doing on many of my rides up here. It wouldn’t be pretty.

So, does anyone have any rim brake wheels they want to sell?