Worst Goathead Season Ever
 

I have lost count of my flats. I don't particularly blame the tire, I blame the cause, but definitely going to upgrade tires and use liners to see what difference it makes. This is ridiculous :twitchy:

Anyone else, or is it just my bad luck?

Damn you guys already have goat heads, I haven't seen any yet in Boise

Oh, they're starting to poke their little heads up here. bastards.

I'll bite---what's a Goathead?

Goathead thorns. Possibly nature's most durable hazard for cyclists in these parts. They have at least three prongs on them, shaped like a big, hard, scary spore, and they go right through even the thickest of rubber (in my experience).

Summer may be fleeting up here, but thank gawd we don't have goatheads.
Like MTBerJim, I had no idea what these little freaks of nature were until riding in AZ one year.
Was quickly introduced to heavy duty tubes and tire liners by a friendly Bike shop owner in Apache Junction who felt sorry for a northerner out of his element. I even remember her name - Jan Long.

Left overs from last year, without a doubt. Hasn't been a particularly wet winter and they are just lurking waiting to strike:eek:

Goatheads or Tribulus terretris, MTBerJim are the bane of every cyclist west of the Mississippi. A nasty weed that grows well in disturbed soils but whose seeds can lie dormant for 50+ years. They look like this

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...te_003_lhp.jpg

and you should thank your lucky stars if you've never run across one. You can also always tell who is, and isn't, familiar with them. If the person tells you just to replace the tubes in a tire, they don't live where these little devils live. If the person brags about having 25 patches per tube, they not only live with them but they are just getting the tube broken in:notamused:;)

They sure do look nasty. If there's one thing I'd like to see transition from mountain biking to road biking, it would be Stan's No-Tubes.

As an aside, I was in Denver for a week back in 02 or 03 (I ferget), I so loved it out there. I didn't even get a chance to do any riding, but loved the vibe, very bike friendly city. Bikes locked up to every street sign, lamp post. I would move out that way in a second if I could.

Picked one up a few weeks ago. I have noticed the more tread pattern, the more goatheads. I rarely encounter them when running smooth tires.

Have not seen any up here yet, we will see how the stock tioga city grippers hold up for the next month.

:roflmao2::roflmao2:Tubeless:roflmao2::roflmao2:

Goat heads laugh at tubeless tires. In goat head country, tubless tires become tubed tires very quickly...and they become flat almost as quickly:notamused:

I've been on a ride with three other people (8 tires), one of which was using tubeless. We collected 27 flats between the four of us on an 12 mile mountain bike ride. One unlucky soul collected 20 of them on her own. The guy with the tubeless collected 6 and my wife collected one.

I, through a sixth sense of where the damned things might be and the wonders of Mr. Tuffys, rolled to my truck with 2 fully inflated tires...and no patches. The goat head collector used all of the ones that I carried, all that everyone else carried and still had to pump tires every half mile to make it back...and I usually carry 10 to 15 patches on every ride!

My wife's one? I forgot to put the Tuffy back in her front wheel when I changed tires:innocent:

Last summer I ran through a patch of goat head that punctured both tires on my dirt bike, they were new tires too. Those SOB's can get pretty damn big and they are sharp as hell

I flatted on Columbia Road south of town on Saturday - cheeky li'l bastrid was still impaled in my roadie tire . . .

I think we aren't on the same page and I think I'm about to do you a huge favor.

A UST tire is a normal tire without a tube, in the sense if it gets a puncture it's going to go flat. The product I mentioned was Stan's No Tubes It's a sealant that goes in the UST tire to seal it as a puncture happens, the tire NEVER goes flat.
I've pulled thorns and even a thumb tack out of my tire. It works just as well with non-UST tires, My first set was the tires that came on my bike, I used the Stan's conversion and rode them smooth.

When I replaced them with UST tires I ran my hand inside the old tire and no exaggeration 25 thorns in the back easy.

Never had a flat and you can run lower tire pressures and not have to worry about pinch flats. I was running 25psi upstate NY, rocks roots, big drops--very ugly, ripped a brake line off the rear caliper, but never flatted.

I just went to Stan's site and noticed they have a 700c conversion, that will be on my X-mas list this year.

Me and my boys went out for a ride the other day and end result was 3 goatheads in my rear tire and my boys tire was completely flat. I pumped up my tire and had "slime" ooozing from a number of holes. But luckily still holding air..................

I got 2 flats in 2 days after being flat free for about 4 years. Not bad, but I think it is time I switch over to Specialized Armadillo Elites on my fitness bikes. My commuter bike has the tried and true regular all condition armadillos.

Please be careful to destroy those thorns when you pull them. They are a biohazard and you westerners are helping them spread East.

The biggest problem with goat heads, are that you generally don't just get one or two in your tire, usually it's 20 or 30 of them, I used to use that stans stuff in place of slime but it didn't work any better and costs more so I went back to the slime.

If anything it's you easterners spreading them east.:)

I know what Stan's is. The guy had Stan's in his tires (tires later delaminated because he had Stan's in it:rolleyes:). It didn't help. Neither does Slime...I've tried it. It just makes a bigger mess.

I remember encountering these nasty brutes on a vacation in southern Washington State one year - I think I got 4 flats on my bike in the space of a week. I pity you guys who have to put up with them on a regular basis.

Tribulus terrestris is a flowering plant in the family Zygophyllaceae, native to warm temperate and tropical regions of the Old World in southern Europe, southern Asia, throughout Africa, and Australia.[2] It can thrive even in desert climates and poor soil. Like many weedy species, this plant has many common names, including puncturevine, caltrop, cathead, yellow vine, goathead, burra gokharu and bindii.[1][3]
Contents
"Goathead" fruit
Thumbtack-like Tribulus terrestris nutlets are a hazard to bicycle tires.
It is a taprooted herbaceous perennial plant that grows as a summer annual in colder climates. The stems radiate from the crown to a diameter of about 10 cm to over 1 m, often branching. They are usually prostrate, forming flat patches, though they may grow more upwards in shade or among taller plants. The leaves are pinnately compound with leaflets less than a quarter-inch long. The flowers are 4–10 mm wide, with five lemon-yellow petals. A week after each flower blooms, it is followed by a fruit that easily falls apart into four or five single-seeded nutlets. The nutlets or "seeds" are hard and bear two to three sharp spines, 10 mm long and 4–6 mm broad point-to-point. These nutlets strikingly resemble goats' or bulls' heads; the "horns" are sharp enough to puncture bicycle tires and to cause painful injury to bare feet.

this guy even got some puncture-vine weevils which ate all the goatheads.

http://www.goatheads.com/home/gh1/pa...cturevine.html

I have 28mm Ultra Gatorskins with slime tubes on my faster bike. It seems to work pretty well for me in Chandler, Az. I do notice that I sometimes see my tires crying little slime teardrops (note I said tire -- this is on the outside!). I don't like the weight, but I hate flats. I'm afraid to take off my tires to see what the tubes look like.

What I hate most is that I seem to be pretty incompetent at patching tubes. Patches pretty much never seem to work right for me.

Never had a flat from them, I've heard they are common here, but for off roaders, not on the pavement.

If I were to break down my 10 mile (each way) commute, the place where the goatheads lie represents about 1/10th of 1% of the trip. To avoid this 40 ft swath of peril, I would have to tack on five miles each direction. Some days it's not a bad idea, but sometimes I roll the dice. I have crapped out too many times this season.