John (Bryan’s brother) got us some tubes and Slime tire liners (thank you dude, you guys are awesome!). As a courier I’ve used Slime liners for years on my work bike and except for the inevitable pinch flat, I can’t remember last time I had a puncture, so I’m very glad we now have them on our SOMA New Xpress tires.
Before I put the liners, I’d only had 4 flats since we left L.A. in October, not a lot, considering the amount of cacti, rocks, nails, glass, goat heads, and pieces of thin sharp wire we’ve found on the roads of Mexico.
The New Xpress are made in Japan by Panaracer for Soma Fabrications. They feature a puncture resistant hypertex casing and a high carbon compound. They have enough tread to work fine on loose gravel roads and even on sandy trails, but you don’t feel much rolling resistance as with other knobbier tires. We haven’t had much rain (yet) but we’ve ridden on wet slippery roads and the tires always handled very well.
We carry a lot of stuff on our Soma Sagas and they feel so nice to ride because they’re very well built and made to ride perfectly when fully loaded, but that nice ride feeling is also due to high quality touring tires: inflated to the recommended 95 psi they’re super smooth and there’s no lateral flexion in spite of the weight we carry.
Sometimes I wish we’d chosen the 35’s instead of our 700×32c just to have a bit more extra cushion, but now, after over one thousand kilometers on our Soma New Xpress tires, i am very happy with our choice. They keep us going nicely.
For more info on Soma’s tires, visit:
somafabrications.com
Tags: mexico, Soma, soma new xpress, soma saga, tires, touring, we keep going, wekeepgoing
