I would go with a tire you can manage. I also found the Schwalbe Marathon, the same tire Tourist in MSN recommended, to be a good compromise between weight, puncture resistance and mounting difficulty.
The Marathons are easy to mount without tools on the Velocity Dyad rims that are on my wife's and my wheels. Our number of punctures went down significantly since switching to them.
Why is it that punctures are almost always on the rear wheel
