I used the Nimbus Armadillo on my commuter bike for a number of years. At the time I was distracted by other things, but I did notice that the bike wasn't so enjoyable to ride as I remembered. I bought a full suspension mountain bike, partly because of the Ritchey's rough ride, partly because of a demo ride on a friend's suspension fork mountain bike. My plan was to use the suspension bike for everything; with that in mind, I bought some Specialized Hemisphere tires and mounted then on the Turner. The combination worked well, but then the Turner started having problems (components, not the frame) that seemed to preclude using it for longer rides.

I remounted the knobbies on the Turner, which left me with a set of Hemispheres. Pretty much on a whim I mounted them on the Ritchey commuter bike. Yowza! The bike was well behaved again. No longer were my hands shaken off the bars when riding on rough pavement. Hemispheres may not be ideal, but they work well enough for me.

Flat protection is well and good, but not when the tires ride like rocks. I can put up with repairing the occasional flat for the sake of better traction and ride quality.