Loaded Touring: An Experiment

This doesn't exactly count as tilting at windmills, but it certainly defies conventional wisdom. I am thinking of carrying everything in front and rear baskets on our little tour this summer. Actually, front panniers, front basket on a rack, and rear basket on a rack. No rear panniers, and way more of the weight on the front than on the back.

Here's my thinking:

Traditional rear panniers are a catastrophe. They are MUCH too far back, putting almost all the extra weight at or behind the rear axle. The tubing is thinner back there, and all the weight that far back shifts the horizontal center of gravity over the rear wheel. As a result, the bike becomes whippy and unstable, and the rear tire and wheel wear out much faster than the front. (And let's not even talk about broken spokes. What a sickening sound: ping ping ping!) Panniers can't be pulled farther forward because they would interfere with pedaling.

So my solution for the back is that I'll pile things in my big basket as close to me, the rider, as I can, making the pile as high and forward as possible. This keeps the horizontal center of gravity near the center of the bike. But what about the vertical center of gravity? As long is the load is close to me, (and as long as I'm not wearing it in a backpack), it shouldn't matter. After all, people who weigh 50 pounds more than me bike successfully. Their center of gravity must be about what my piled up pack and I would have. Of course, there is the small problem of getting on the bike. I'll just climb over the piled up gear. Or get lowered by a crane.

But the more radical thought, which I get from CETMAracks.com (makers of burly front racks on which they say you can carry medium-size appliances), is that almost all the load should be carried by the front wheel. It's a stronger wheel because of the symmetrical spoke tension and rim that's centered on the axle, the tubing on the fork is stronger than that of the chainstay and seatstay, and the horizontal center of gravity is closer to the center of the bike.

The conventional wisdom is that you don't want to overload the front because it will interfere with steering, but really, how much steering do you do with a fully loaded touring bike? Basically, you go straight. Steering is done as much by shifting weight as by turning the front wheel. And as long as the load is not wobbly, why does it have to hang down nearly to the road, as with the most extreme front panniers? Again, as long as the load is close to the rider and reasonably low (I wouldn't want to carry it in a raised front-end loader shovel, for example), keeping the horizontal center of gravity close to the center of the bike, I don't think the vertical center of gravity matters that much. (Grant Peterson rants about that point.)

Front panniers are nice, but they're not very big. So I'm going to try mounting a nice big Wald basket on my front rack and piling it high with gear. I love the idea of just throwing stuff into a basket, rather than cramming it into unknown nooks and crannies of panniers.

On previous tours, I have used rear panniers and front handlebar bag. The panniers were LOADED. (In addition to our--too much--gear, we used to carry large glass jars of peanut butter, large loaves of bread, large bags of cookies, and anything else we picked up at the grocery store.) It was whippy and a bit odd, sometimes (and Jon's rear wheel tacoed on him at one point, proving my point about panniers), but we managed for thousands of miles. (And that on a couple of Gitane Interclubs, hardly touring bikes.) So it's not like there's one and only one way of doing this.

It will be an interesting experiment. I'll load it up and take it on some proof-of-concept rides this spring and report back.