Originally Posted by bragi

Hi all:

I could post this in commuting, but this is where I usually post, and I'm a creature of habit:

On my daily ride into work, I've noticed that someone has been intermittently breaking something made of glass, presumably bottles, in the bike lane on the one freeway overpass that I must take. At first, I thought it must just be an unfortunate coincidence, but it's been frequent enough, and at a strategic enough location, that I've been forced to conclude that it's the work of some idiot with nothing better to do. I have some reasonably sturdy tires (Continental Contact), and usually glass isn't really a problem, but this glass is very sharp, it works its way into tires very effectively, its shards are tiny and hard to see until I'm on top of them, and I've had flats twice in the last three months (I usually get a flat maybe once every 2-3 years). Even worse, if you don't spend a lot of time locating the tiny piece of glass that gave you your flat, it will gift you with a new flat within 30 minutes of repair. I will of course try to avoid this glass whenever I can, and woe to this person if ever I see them in the act, but in the meantime: what tires do you recommend for preventing flats? I've used Schwalbe Marathon before, but have found that those tires, while certainly very sturdy, are so stiff that they don't have very good traction on wet road surfaces...