It's all about the contact points, where your hands touch the bars, where your butt interfaces with the saddle, your shoes enveloping your feet and firmly attached to your pedals, and there you are, symbiotically connected to this machine and moving through space and once you've made effective connections to your bike you need to make an effective connection to the ground. Ah, tires, there are so many to choose from. I don't stock a lot of tires here. Well, I do, but not a lot of selection within a single price range or performance category. I try to cover any use and a number of price points but I don't have five different $50 road tires. I've had good luck with tires and bad, you can get a flat on a $90 tire just as easily as you can on a $10 tire, glass seems to not have any concerns for how many hours you had to work to afford the tires on your bike. But the tire you select will change the way your bike rides. Higher thread counts and more supple casings make for smoother rolling tires. The way the rubber wraps around the casing will affect a tire's propensity for sidewall cuts. There are indeed, good tires and bad tires.
I'd been riding Kenda tires on my mountain bike for quite some time and despite their more affordable price tag I'd been thoroughly impressed by their durability and performance. So one day some time ago I picked up the catalogue to check out what Kenda offered in the way of road tires. I found the Kaliente L3R Pros at a reasonable price and I ordered a pair to try them out. Once mounted up I immediately noticed they rode pretty much as nicely as the Vittoria Open Corsas they replaced despite being about half the price. The had a nice round profile and gripped quite well in the corners. I though, "hey, if these are this good, I wonder what their expensive tires ride like." Once again I go back to the catalogue to look for more Kenda tires only to discover that the ones I had just put on my bike were the high end Kenda road tires.
The Kenda Kalientes weigh a mere 195grams, and even though they aren't the highest thread count available they are a respectable 120tpi and manage to ride as smoothly as any tubular I've tried. I've had my first "trial" pair on my city bike for better than 2000kms now and though they are looking a little beat up they look like they have a fair bit of life left in them. The rear tire is only just starting to square off while the front is nearly perfect. The Kalientes have what they call an Iron Cloak layer to aid in the prevention of flats. I'm not one to buy into the voodoo magic layers of any tires being overly effective at preventing flats. Sharp things on the road will eventually find their way into your tire leaving you swearing as you realize this is the one day of the month you've commuted without a spare and a pump with you. That being said, I've only had one flat with these tires and I blame that one wholly on myself. (it was a flat that involved an under inflated front tire, a pot hole, a couple too many beers in my belly, and a race for last call at the Brickhouse, can't blame the tire for any of that.) And all my 2000+kms on these tires have been in the city where tire gnawing glass is found in abundance along the sides of the streets.
How much would you pay for sub 200gram, sticky, well wearing, flat resistant tires? Try $39. Why would I stock anything else?
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