Thinking about tubbies

After taking care of some business at the Vet clinic/boarding place I decided to do a nice recovery ride out of pontiac. Joeberon called earlier in the day and we were going to hook up something nice and casual as I was trying to loosed the legs up after 2 days of racing and Joe was fresh off of a 3rd place finish at Addison Oaks yesterday. Rumor has it he was in 2nd going into the last lap and he accidentally took a wrong turn allowing Kuhncappi to pass him and grab the runner up spot. Well anyway to make a long story short we had some time to kill before we met up with Brian so we decided to take Gale road out to Teggerdine then head back into the park and finish up the last mile of trail before heading out to the parking lot. Oh did I forget to mention that I was still riding the CX bike as my MTB is out having the SID (aka the floppy flier) worked on at the LBS. The first attempt at PLRA was a success as I actually felt comfortable riding down the last downhill before making the final climb and riding back to the lot. After picking up Bro Brian the plan was to ride the backroads, nothing crazy and to chill. Everything went well and on the way back the plan was to ride in through the back of PLRA along the campground road and back out like Joe and I did on the first lap. Well this time things got a little twisted. I felt good swooping down the last downhill but on the last little uphill I felt a rock bounce off of my front wheel , pinching my tire and flatting it. NBD as I had another tube but in the time it took to remove the old tube and replace it with the new one I must have gotten bitten by 10 misquitos. Little bastards. Well we got the tube inflated enough that I could ride out and get back to the car. Afterward I kind of felt dumb for trying to ride my CX bike out there. Did I really think that I could get away with riding a gnarly trail like PLRA without flatting. Which made me ponder something else on the drive home. Would I have flatted with tubulars and would they really make that much of a difference racing CX. Joe said he read an interview with Page today in which he said that tires and wheels make a huge difference in CX. I would like to think that they would help but realistically at the current level that I'm riding I'm not sure they would make that much of a difference. But still the thought of some of those Reynolds Tubulars make me salivate. I'll have to keep checking ebay for now as the new ones are just to pricey but who knows the temptation may be to much to overcome and I may have to give in. TC