Ok, so I've run tubeless now going on 4 years. I ran a conversion kit for 3.5 with non UST tires, and never had a flat. For the past .5 year I've run the same type of non UST tires, Maxxis CrossMark, on my ZTR tubeless rims, and still haven't had a flat. It's not like I'm riding in Georgia on nice paths either, I'm in freaking Arizona, and I ride hard. Lots of jagged rocks, thorns on everything, and harsh temperatures.

The guys at my LBS all race, ride hard, and are tubeless as well. Same story as me, they're so confident that they don't even carry a tube or a pump on the bike. None of those three have had a puncture outside of a couple catastrophic explosions that would render the tire useless even with a tube. Get a thorn? pull it out and watch the Stan's goo fill up the hole and harden almost immediately.

So this is where I get confused. Why do I hang out in the shop and hear countless people turn down any thought of going tubeless? I watch people on the trail changing tires constantly and when I suggest on the group ride that they go tubeless, they sneer at me in revolt as if I'd suggested they blow a guy in the alley for cocaine. Meanwhile, I keep on riding and they keep getting flats. We had 14 flats on a group ride last Wednesday between a total of 10 riders. None of those flats were on the 4 bikes in the group with tubeless tires. Not one.

Why, when I suggest to a good friend, that he make his newly built Superfly 29'er SLX tubeless, does he tell me tubeless is a dumb fad that doesn't work? Then he texts me saying he got two flats on a ride through the neighborhood, saying he only has one tube. He's been on these group rides where the tubeless guys are as close to invencible as you can get. He has witnessed this first hand, yet still refuses to spend the $75 on going tubeless... that's about the cost of 8 flats between tubes and Co2 cartridges.

I just don't get it... maybe it's different in some parts of the country, but in a place like Phoenix, why the hell would anyone refuse tubeless? Is it just some newfangled technology that the ol' schoolers don't want because they don't understand it? Is it something that happens because they heard it from a friend who heard it from a guy who knows the owner of a shop's wife that tubeless stinks?

WHY!?

/end rant