It's always amazing to us to discover things that are "common knowledge" in one part of the country that are totally unknown in other parts of the country. One of these things are goatheads here in Mesa. We ride our bikes a lot around the area. After a few rides we started pulling these nasty little seeds with stingers on them out of our tires. The guy in the site next to us here at Sun Life told us they were goatheads. Turns out there are all over the place! Since "discovering" them we've fixed flats on all of our tires, sometimes several times per tire! We talked to the owner of a nearby bike shop about what to do. He said most people around here "desert-proof" their tires. This involves installing a tough, plastic liner between the inside of the tire and the tube and using tubes that are filled with "slime", a green substance that coagulates when exposed to air. "Slime" really works! Before we knew about the plastic liners we had just "slime tubes" on a couple of tires. After pulling out a goathead from these tires air and a little "slime" hissed out of the hole and then it's sealed. We've now completely desert-proofed all of our tires and, so far, no more flats!
Click here for an official US Government picture of the little beasties!
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