Carrying Loads

My wife and I just finished riding the western half of the Erie Canalway Trail. The trip was fun despite Mother Nature's best efforts. (More later.)

For now, I'll just muse a bit about carrying loads on bike trips. I have done it all: huge back panniers, huge low-rider front panniers, combinations of medium panniers, front and back. But I am concluding that it's not so much the height of the load (low-rider vs. high-rider) as the rigidity. On this trip, I carried almost all our clothes in a Rivendell Sackville ShopSack, which was in a large Wald basket. (See photo above.) This was a very nice arrangement. The basket holds the load completely rigid, no swaying, and the load stays right up behind me, close to my own center of gravity. As a result, the bike was very stable, with very little shimmy compared with the shimmy I experienced when the bike was loaded with large front or back panniers.

This arrangement was perfect for staying at inns. We'd park our bikes in the garage, pop the bag out of the basket, and go to our room. No panniers to detach and wrastle (or empty). The Shopsack is a beautifully made (in the USA) bag,  a bargain at $45. It's quite huge. At more than 2000 cu. in., it's the size of many large pannier sets.

I'm thinking of getting a medium shopsack and basket to put on the front, so that I can get rid of the stupid front panniers shown in the photo. Quite frankly, I don't care if baskets and duffels look outlandish. To me, they are beauty exemplified.