I've got my road tool kit split between two ziploc bags: The one is the tyre changing kit, the second is every other tool which theoretically gives me the ability to disassemble and repair the bike along the road except for the bottom bracket and rear cluster. When the two are carried together, they're in a zipper denim bag I sewed up a few years ago. And I'm carrying at least a good handlebar bag, if not the panniers, to bother carrying the full kit.
My long term affair with tubulars is due heavily to the realization that I can swap out a flatted tyre and be back on the road in about a quarter of the time as I can with clinchers - and that's 27x1-1/4's. Don't even ask regarding high pressure 700c clinchers. I tend to snap plastic tyre irons trying to get them off. And end up switching back to the tubular wheels as soon as I get the bike home.
This year, I've decided to give one more try on the clinchers. Well, mountain biking finally worked out after two failures. Ditto, SS/FG's. I dusted off the Bontrager wheels I picked up at Westminster three years ago and put them back on the Fuji Finest (2003), and built the set of clinchers for the Trek 460. Running Hutchinsons on both (mainly because they always seem to be on sale.
I notice, however, that I haven't unglued the tubular wheels for either bike - and probably won't until I get at least six months trouble free service out of the clinchers. Hopefully third time's a charm (once again) but I'm not getting my hopes up too much.
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Syke
“No one in this world, so far as I know — and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me — has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.”
H.L. Mencken, (1926)