I'm far too used to tubeless tyres. Gary Fisher Tassajara.

Out on an exploratory ride to see if the Bike Beans café in Ashtead has improved since my last visit a year ago. Managed to put together a nice circular off-road route with the café at the furthest point, so off I went. Now I decided that as it is fully dry here in Surrey that I'd take the Tassajara out for a spin. It's a great, fast bike so why not? Well the why not is tubeless allied to semi slick tyres. On all my other bikes I've gone tubeless and my technique has gotten lazy. I plough through stuff with no finesse. Rocks? Yeah sure, jump into them. Seems I can't do that on a bike with tubes, and it didn't take long to get a snakebite jumping stuff on Stane Street. What a silly boy, and a timely reminder either to go fully tubeless on all of my bikes, or re-learn to ride properly.

And the café? Well I'll do a separate report on that later on.

 It is for this reason that I hate tubes. Admittedly going tubeless involves learning a whole new range of swear words, but once set up you tend to forget about it. One ride in, and I get a puncture and have to fix an inner tube. It's all so sad. Just a faff to change this bike as I'd have to use a full kit seeing as how I have Fulcrum Red metal rims.