This is basically me blowing off some steam, but if some useful advice comes out of it, all the better.
My bike is a leftover '07 Jamis Sputnik bought early in '09. It came with Vittoria tires that I never had issue with. I put a bit over 2000km on them, then finally noticed that the sidewalls were cracking. It was probably like that when I bought the bike, cracking as a result of the rubber just being old.
Anyhow, I decided in my great wisdom to be proactive so that I wouldn't get stranded due to a tire failure, and swapped on a set of great-looking Michelin Krylion tires. Of course, I did a bad job of the swap and ruined the tube, breaking it right near the stem where I couldn't fix/patch it. And of course I did that on the Sun of a long weekend when all bike shops were closed until Tue, AND I had no spares at home. Had a 75k ride with my wife planned for that Sun, too. STUPID!
Anyhow, lots of folks like these tires a lot and I spent more than I planned but was happy with the looks and performance of the result once I sorted out my stupid failure. I put about 500km on them before putting the bike into storage last fall, but noticed a cut in the middle of the tread of one of the tires when I took it out this spring.
Oh-ho, what a good eye I have! It hurt to replace the most expensive tire I ever bought after such a short time, but I don't want to get stranded, and it's a safety issue. Even for a slow guy like me, a blowout at speed would be very unpleasant. The pretty Krylions were on back-order, so I spent some time looking at what was in stock, talking with the salesperson, and settled on some Hutchinson something-or-others because they claimed to be a tough tire and they were almost all black, which I figured would look good on my unmachined black Velocity Deep V.
So I premptively changed the tire, used much more care with the tube this time, and started riding again. NICE!
Yesterday I go to leave work and that back Hutchinson is flat. COME ON! I've put less than 200km on that tire! Let's have a look - yup, picked up 2 pieces of glass. Pushed it to the MEC, they picked out the glass and swapped tubes right away, and I was back on the road.
I talked with the repair guy a bit about tires, and he suggested going to GatorSkins. I know that lots of people on here like those tires, I'll probably do it. I just wish that the logos weren't that garish orange.
Have I just had a string of bad luck, or were the Krylion and Hutchinson tires bad choices for city riding? Or did I worry too much about a little nick in the Krylion and replace it before I had to? Who knows? What will I do next? I have no idea. Nothing will look better on my bike than the Krylions w/ grey sidewall. Realistically I don't need a performance tire, but it's hard for me to make myself put something heavy on my nice light bike.
Thanks for listening.
