Back in the Day When I was a kid, I spent many of my after-school hours hanging out at Jerry Baker's place. Jerry, having tired of the Boeing engineer life, had switched gears and was running a mail-order business called Baker's Bikes out of his house. My friends and I would sit around and watch him, learning how to build wheels, take apart a Campy Nuovo Record derailleur, fix a tire, or rebuild a hub. It was a great way to learn the art of bicycle maintenance from the bottom bracket up. In those days, a tire was a sewup. You had a couple of choices, but basically you used either Clément Campionato del Mondos or Paris-Roubaix's for training and 250 or 220 gram Criterium Setas for racing. Hell, we TOURED to California on del Mondos. Once a year we would put together a big group order and each buy maybe 10 or 12 tires for about $8.00 per; it was considered the year's major expenditure. Pretty much everyone used 36 hole Fiamme Red Label rims on Campy Record hubs; 32 hole was considered radical and potentially unsafe, at least for road.

Years later, I moved from Seattle to New York City, and then to Los Angeles, all the while keeping up my riding and never veering from the true tubular way. Silk gave way to cotton Cléments, and then when the brothers reached a slow consensus on the declining quality of Clément, to Vittorias. The standard setup in the '80's was a CX on the front and a slightly heavier CG on the rear, glued up on Mavic 32 hole grey anodized GP4 rims. When I moved back to Seattle in 1991 with two kids and two house payments to juggle, I somehow decided that the new Michelin clinchers were "just about as good as sewups" and a whole lot cheaper and easier to fix. I sold off all my good aged Vittorias and sewup wheels, and convinced myself that I couldn't afford to ride tubular tires anymore, and since I wasn't racing, why bother?

Last year, though, something clicked inside of me and I decided to build up a set of sewup wheels just for the "really nice days." I got hold of a pair of 32 hole Reflex Ceramics and built them up on DuraAce hubs with DT 14/15 spokes - nothing fancy, just solid, strong road wheels. I located some $29 Continental Sprinters at Ital-Tecno and stocked up. And then I rode them. It was like being a kid again. They were faster, lighter, and cornered better. They were more supple and gave a better ride without sacrificing rolling resistance. And they especially were superior at transferring power when you stood up on the pedals; the sewups just seemed to store up energy and sling you down the road with it - I found myself comfortably using a 1or 2 tooth smaller cog than I had with clinchers. Was it all in my head? I don't really know, but I found myself using them more and more, until this year I even ended up riding them to work through most of the summer. Would YOU think it's worth the time, money and extra effort? That's a hard call. I don't know who you are, where you ride, or what your finances are like. But life is short, and my advice is this: ride sewups whenever you get the chance, they're a shot of sweetness in a vast and bitter world.

Greg Louie
Team OBrien