Originally Posted by
HelpSingularity
You really can't compare riding through the mean streets of a city, no matter how gnarly, to goathead country.
Late summer/fall is absolute murder in goathead country.
Even the Marathon Plus tires are not immune to their evilness.
I don't currently live in goathead country so I haven't been testing the latest and greatest from Schwalbe.
But having experienced goatheads in both Denver, Colorado and Bakersfield, California I can confidently say I'd gladly ride in the glass strewn gutter all day rather than the hellscape that is goathead country in late summer/fall.
Installing sealant filled inner tubes helped mitigate those pesky thorns for me.
But this was way back in the last decade, lots of product advancement and information since then.
I did take my bike to California this last summer and rode out in the Mojave desert for the first time in a long time, I had a few goat heads attached to the tires, but nothing penetrated, I just wiped them off with my foot as I rode and saw them. When I say glass-strewn roads, city streets rarely have much in the way of glass, I was talking about on the side of highways where the street sweepers never go, and the glass accumulates over the years! I guess you never rode on a highway.