Tires: A Top Five

So I got a request to write about for my favorite half-dozen clinchers. “What a fun survey,” I thought. And I began making my list. A list is nothing without bias, and I began to consider my priorities.

The first priority when I choose a tire is ride quality. Life is short; I say, ride what you like, even if that means you’re on carbon fiber rims intended for PROs. Placing ride quality first meant this list would skew toward open tubulars and away from inexpensive 60 tpi clinchers.

Second is availability. There’s no point in loving something you can’t find. A prime example of this is Pariba. They make one of the single most supple open tubulars I ever rode. It featured a godawful lavender tread (nothing wrong with lavender as a color, but it won’t match a single component on the market) with a grip like chewing gum. But you can’t find it anywhere in the U.S. Or at least, the combination of me, Google and 15 minutes of wasted time were unsuccessful. Ergo, not on list.

Third is mountability. If the tire has a great ride quality but is insanely hard to mount, and ultimately, to change a flat, that will bump it on down the list.

Fourth is flat protection. You don’t buy an open tubular because it doesn’t flat. You buy it because it is the rubber equivalent of the kid glove. No other tire combines sensitivity, grip and reduced rolling resistance so effectively as a good open tubular.

I quickly realized I don’t currently have direct experience with six clinchers that I can recommend. Some tires that I liked in the past have been discontinued. Some that I previously gave good reviews to have been changed to increase flat protection marginally, while decreasing ride quality noticeably. And there are some, such as everything by Challenge, that I have not ridden at all, while still others, such as Schwalbe, where I seem to have ridden all the wrong ones.

The list:

1. Any Vittoria Open Corsa. No other open tubular combines ride quality and availability the way the Vittoria Open Corsas do. Carrying Open Corsas is kind of a barometer by which I measure shops. If they don’t have these, it can only mean one of two things: Either they like something else better, or they aren’t that concerned with ride quality. I like the CG for durability. I rode thousands of miles training and racing on its tubular brother; it got my through some nasty Battenkill-style courses and training rides. That said, the CX is a little more supple and is preferable for descending and cornering. Performance-wise, probably the best tire out there, but you can’t run it every day. Put another way, this isn’t a tire for most of New England, but it’s the perfect tire for Provence and Tuscany. I haven’t tried the Open Corsa Tech or Slick, but would run either without reservation.

2. Torelli Gavia. This is my tire of choice as I’ve previously mentioned. It features a handmade casing and comes in but one color: Henry Ford black. It is also one of the grippiest tires I’ve ridden. I know the guys at Torelli and they let me to purchase directly from them, giving me a 320 tpi ride at 127 tpi prices. The Torellis are a good deal harder to find than the Vittorias, though you can purchase them online, so if you don’t need them today, you can do well. They tend to run a bit more expensive online than the Vittorias do, but I prefer the ride quality of the Gavia over the CG.

3. Vredestein Fortezza Tri-Comp. Any open tubular is hard to mount the first time you put it on a rim. This is a feature inherited from its tubular fathers, which is why we were all taught to stretch our tubulars on a rim before gluing them on a wheel. The Fortezza Tri-Comp stretches more than your average tire and after the first week of riding or so, I can change flats without the need for a tire lever, which stops quick as a pee and helps keep me in the group’s good graces. The Tri-Comp is a great tire, but I do not remotely buy Vredestein’s contention that they need to be pumped up to 145 psi to work properly. That’s like suggesting your food won’t stay frozen unless you pack your freezer to capacity. Right. At that pressure mountain road asphalt feels like black ice. Back at sane pressures (7-8 bar), they offer cat-like cornering with driving glove sensitivity. When a shop doesn’t carry Vittoria Open Corsas, this is usually the tire I find in its place.

4. Specialized Mondo Pro II. The Mondo Pro II is the Def Con II of bicycle tires. It offers almost all the protection of the Armadillo’s conventional warfare while still engaging the road with supple diplomacy. This is the only bicycle tire that I’ve ever ridden that I can say has never flatted in more than 1000 miles of riding and I’m still willing to ride on mountain descents with the same gusto I reserve for open tubulars. To be clear: the ride quality of the Mondo Pro II suffers in the ride quality department when compared to the offerings from Vittoria, Vredestein and Torelli. However any other tire with as seemingly impervious a nature as the Mondo Pro II is inevitably bound to offer the sensitivity of a mosh pit, which is why this tire so surprised me.

5. Specialized Mondo S-Works. Sensitive as a chick flick, as available as Chevy and me-too priced, the Mondo S-Works is a terrific alternative to any of the other open tubulars listed above. Just one problem: changing this tire is harder than calculus. If human flesh stretched so little, we’d all look like Heidi Montag. I dread changing flats with this tire the way I dread changing flats with a tubular, and that’s a level of fear that I reserve for Brian DePalma movies and phone calls from the IRS (not saying either are scary, just that I never know what I’m in for). It’s a terrifc-riding tire, but if you buy a pair, just make sure you carry two tire levers with you.

Again, this list is rather personal. There are hundreds of tires on the market. In the next year or two, I hope to try two or three more that might increase my vocabulary.

The Story of the Tour de France, Vols. 1 and 2

I’ve got Vince Guaraldi playing, the boy is wearing a onesie that says “Not an Elf” and every blog in America has posted a Christmas gift guide … ‘cept this one. Time to get with the program.

The vast majority of all books on cycling are simply information delivery systems. Whether they are training manuals, repair manuals, accounts of racing or biographies of racers, the vast majority of all cycling titles out there deliver little more than facts. Finding a truly gripping story can be kinda hard.

I’ve known Bill and Carol McGann for more than a dozen years. It might seem odd to see two authors listed on a volume, but to meet Bill and Carol is to see their intertwined talents and inseparable efforts. Bill is an ever-rational Don Quixote, easily inspired into new quests, and Carol is his Sancho Panza, the master of logistics and details. And while I have summed up their roles tidily here, the truth is that except for physically, it’s hard to tell where Bill’s efforts stop and Carol’s efforts begin; their professional efforts are that seamless.

In the late 1990s Bill told me he wanted to put together a comprehensive history of the Tour de France for English-speaking folk. I couldn’t deny his passion, but the guy owned a bike company—Torelli Imports—not a publishing house. It seemed just a little hare-brained a scheme, but I was more than happy to play along. I loaned him every book I had on the Tour in case it was any use.

Three years ago the first volume was released, encompassing the years 1903 to 1964. What unfolded in its pages was an unexpected treat. I was suddenly embarrassed that I’d ever wondered what sort of work they’d produce.

The McGanns are keen students of history. They can discuss Renaissance art and architecture, the satire of Al Capp, or any edition of the Tour de France, all with equal ease. Carol lets Bill take lead, but it’s apparent during his occasional silences that she’s as well-versed as he.

When I confessed in a phone call that I had some trouble identifying with the pre-WWII riders and wondered how it was he found racing in such different circumstances so compelling, he was aghast. “Those guys were going bloody hard!” If I can testify to nothing else, I can say Bill knows a thing or two about going “bloody hard.” And he loves it.

What surprised me in reading both of his volumes was his use of novelistic techniques to tell the stories of these great riders. He can kill off a rider’s relevance—indeed, his whole career—as fast as Flaubert killed off the first Madame Bovary. He uses foreshadowing to build drama and hint at coming tragedy in a way that reminded me of Stephen King.

Asked who his literary heroes are, he cites Homer and Tolstoy. Perfect. Stick the two in a blender and you get a sweeping epic that crushes lives, spans generations, rattles politicians, shapes culture. Sounds a lot like the Tour de France itself.

This account isn’t an account of each stage won and passage of the yellow jersey from one rider to the next. No, it’s a big-picture view; the McGanns mine each year for themes of treachery, transcendent efforts, unchecked ego and Sisyphean heartache. In his telling Icarus falls as often as Oedipus gets the girl. (Ew.)

Here’s a classic example of the storytelling in the books. This is from the 1996 Tour:

It took Riis 11 years as a pro to attain this level. It was a performance the 32-year-old would not repeat. Since that Tour victory, Riis has been dogged by accusations of EPO use, accusations that Riis steadfastly denied until 2007. Riis’ confession was an important part of the dramatic events that rocked the 2007 Tour. We’ll save the details of that episode for later. His young charge, Ullrich, became the first German since Kurt Stoepel in 1932 to make the Tour’s podium.

Whew, I feel like Billy Pilgrim—unstuck in time.

Were you to read every word published on every Tour in l’Auto and l’Equipe and someone were to ask you to sum up the events, what your takeaway was, this would be it. With these two volumes you get perspective, a la Leonardo Da Vinci. Off in the distance each of the lines representing the careers of these riders converge and the McGanns are more than happy to tell you what badasses they were.

The books are available through Amazon or from the Bike Race Info website here.

Record Pregara Impermeabile

It may be said that Southern California is to cold what Belgium is to tropical. Short-sleeve skinsuits are generally the rule for cyclocross in SoCal, but to say cold weather is unknown to cyclists here is to think  all cyclists are skinny.

Most of the group rides I do depart early. Whether it’s July or January, we’re on the bike by 7:00, often earlier. Let me tell you that life at the the beach in December isn’t what you think of as life at the beach. In the winter months I do a lot of riding in the 45 to 55-degree range. They are not the freezing conditions I experienced in New England, but proper preparation is no less important.

My preferred embrocation for cooler conditions is Record’s Pregara Forte. You can see my review of it for BKW here. It’s perfect for those days that start in the 60s or the upper 50s but will warm as the sun rises. It’s thin and provides just enough heat to keep my legs warm for about two hours.

However, on those days that start in the lower 50s and may not warm much, Pregara Forte is a couple of spokes shy of a wheel. Last winter I began adding a coating of another Record product, Pregara Impermeabile.

Pregara Impermeabile is meant to be used in cold and especially in wet conditions. It’s heavy on petroleum jelly but has a much stiffer consistency than regular Vaseline thanks to the addition of paraffin and lanolin. Many—if not most—of the other ingredients are mixed in to create the product’s distinctive perfume.  Camphor, rosemary, ginger and lavender to create a lovely, heady concoction that conjures thoughts of hard riding for me, and our honeymoon for my wife. As it happens, I brought Record products along instead of knee warmers. Like the smell of apple pie, the scent of Record products fill me with anticipation.

Now because of the petroleum jelly, paraffin and lanolin, this stuff won’t wash off with ordinary soap. I keep a bottle of Dawn dishwashing liquid in the shower during the colder months just for this duty.

• Overall heat—low (best if combined with Pregara Forte)
• Euro style—Incredible shine
• Smell—Better than a Provençal herb garden
• Durability—All day; longer if you’re not careful

Like other Record products, Pregara Impermeabile is available in 100ml tubes and 250ml jars; they retail for roughly $19 for the tube and $32 for the jar. Torelli Imports distributes Record products. To find a Torelli dealer near you, click here.

It may seem like an extra, time-consuming step to add the Impermeabile over Forte, but I have come to love being able to formulate exactly what I need for the day. Even as I try other embrocations, this will stay in my bag of tricks.