She has two pairs of Ortlieb panniers, which so far have been able to hold whatever I've tried to put into it.
I got her then two days later, left to visit a good friend in Alabama for five days. In the week since i've gotten back, it's rained a lot and has been cooler than the week before. I've ridden her nearly every day I could have.
One of the first trips I made on her was to my storage unit to pull out my tent. I bought this tent, I want to say, in 1999 or 2000. It has been to such exotic places as Maui and Missouri, as well as being used as a well sniffed napping spot for the cat. Alas, it's 12lbs and 22" long. Any personal fondness for this tent aside, that is more wight and volume than I'm willing to invest in a tent. Between that and the need for a camp stove, I knew that a trip to an outdoorsy type store was in order. Sadly, there are no camping stores in NYC. The one I had recommended was Campmor in Paramus. It's about 63 miles round trip. So, I threw the back panniers on the bike and headed to jersey. I walked out with a 5lb tent; a camp stove, pans, utensils and fuel that I later realized I won't be able to take on the plane with me; a new balaclava; some convertible pants and a few pair of sturdy underwear. They tent was strapped onto the rack and everything else fit in the panniers, not even filling either one halfway.
All was going reasonably well until it wasn't. I hit a patch of bad road and somehow the right pannier had jumped off the rack and was trying out a new career as a brake for the rear wheel. I was not expecting to come to a stop suddenly in jersey afternoon traffic, but there I was. I pulled the bike up onto the sidewalk and started to investigate. The plastic bar that serves as the keep the bottom of the bag rigid had snapped. The seam along the bottom corner was ripped open, not a feature one normally looks for in a bag. That corner was now curling in towards the wheel. I pulled everything heavy out of the pannier and put it in the other. I tried to straighten the plastic bar, but apparently the wheel was able to exert more force on it than I could. I rode back gingerly, pausing every mile or so to make sure the bag stayed out of the spokes, and stopping suddenly when it didn't.
Since the bike shop was more or less on my way home, I stopped in. I found the pannier guy and explained what had happened. He said that that was highly unusual for an Ortlieb. He looked at everything for a moment, and declared that it was user error, that the bag hadn't been hanging on the rack properly. And then he looked at me and asked 'It was one of our guys that installed it, wasn't it?' It was. So he shrugged, grabbed a new one for me and said he'd take care of it.
Yay! That makes me <3 my bike shop. I really didn't want to spend another $80 on replacing that one, and I'm glad I didn't have to.
I should end this one here. I also have posts to make about training and the route, but they deserve their own posts.
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