Things that make you go huh?…

Tucked in a statement about Kenda introducing 650B sized Nevegals was a note about Kenda also introducing a line of tubular tires at Sea Otter. Very intriguing. A “line” generally also means more than one. That sounds like a pretty big commitment to a tire type that represents a very small segment of the bicycle tire industry. It would be interesting to know how many tubulars are sold in the states and compare that number with the potential market of 650B tires. Tooling up to make a 650B sized tire (of which the tread pattern tooling exists) is relatively small compared to producing “a line” of tubular tires from scratch (if that’s what they are doing). I’d love to see a nice 25-28 sized tire in the 250g to 275g range. Mmmmm. Tubulars are back.

Bike Radar posted that Brian Lopes will be riding Ibis bikes for 2008. If the Kenda/tubular news wasn’t enough, this really makes one scratch their head. Just seems like an odd pairing based on the riding style of each entity. Maybe this is a signal that Lopes isn’t going to focus on racing as much as he will on adventure riding/filming with his friend Hans Rey??? (Well, there ya go with a wink, wink, nudge, nudge to Daryll Licht.)