We're in the middle of Chinese New Year vacation so I've had some time to get in some miles - guilt free.

I had a few days in the mountains and it was great. Today was supposed to be 3 1/2 hours with a few small climbs but only a total elevation gain of 2000m or so.

I was about 90 minutes in when I picked up a nasty piece of glass. It put a good gash in my tire. So I boot the tire and swapped in the spare tube. I pumped and hopped back on just in time to have the valve go on the spare. Crap.

I pulled out the old tube and slaped on a glueless patch which had, by now, become literally 'glueless'. I don't know how long I've had these but clearly I need to buy new ones.

So now I am just over 20km from home if I take the most direct route which involves some broken up farm roads, a few overpasses and one small climb. So I set off.

A lot of what I do is test stuff from various factories and today is no different. I have a set of sample carbon clinchers laced into new hubs we are working on for an OE customer. The tire was already trashed so I really didn't care what happened to it but I was hoping to get a few more kms out of the rims so I could form an opinion about the factory and their ability to produce carbon goods.

I rode the 20ish km home and pulled of the tire. I looked at the rim and there is no physical evidence of anything ever having happend. The rim is as goods as when I laced it up a few days ago. There is no pitting or chunks missing or maring of any kind.

Colour me impressed.

Try that with cheapo Chinese carbon!