I was down in Baja doing a 1,230 mile training run from Ensenada to Cabo San Lucas, and quickly came to terms with how brutal the terrain is on both yourself and your motorcycle. One minute you are blazing along and the next minute you’re changing a flat in the middle of nowhere under a 100 degree sun.

It takes about 30 minutes to change a front tube and about 45 minutes to change a rear one, and that is by someone who really knows their stuff. The Baja 1000 is a timed race where the possibility of not finishing is quite real. In fact, only about 35% of teams finish the race each year. Each second is precious so you want to avoid flats at all costs.

One thing I heard repeatedly in Baja was that you should run a Michelin Bib Mousse on your front tire and a heavy duty tube on your rear tire. I would nod in accordance all the time thinking to myself, what the hell does a Bull Moose have to do with any of this?

Once I got the spelling right, I found out that it’s “a foam insert that can replace conventional inner tubes in off road motorcycle tires. It is a ring of butyl honeycomb foam with its cells filled with nitrogen. It has a smooth-molded outer skin that is designed to slip into specific size off-road motorcycle tire. Bib-Mousse have a considerable advantage over normal inner-tubes, as they do not and cannot be punctured or burst.”

I have never ridden on this type of tube, but was told that it rides differently than a regular tube. It feels heavier and carries more momentum which can take some getting used to, especially as you come into corners. I have seen some disclaimers that it shouldn’t be ridden on hard surfaces for more than 20 miles at high speed which presents a bit of a dilemma since the Baja 1000 contains longer sections of pavement that connect parts of the course. I guess you grin and bear it. Certainly beats a flat…