SOMETIMES THE SIMPLEST THINGS…….

Recently I was cleaning out a cupboard and found this – the bag pictured on the left here. That is the first bag I had on a road-bike.

A few years ago I wrote an article for the web-site here titled “A Bag On The Back.” In that article I said that, with just one exception, every registered bike I’ve owned has had a rack on the back. I didn’t always carry things with me, but when necessary, I did.

I think that the ability to carry things with you is important. For example, it’s always wise to carry a few basic tools. Even on modern bikes you can have a mirror come loose, or a mounting for something. So basic tools are good to have. It’s also advisable to carry wet weather gear. The weather can be so unpredictable, it’s best not to try second-guess what it’s going to do. A friend of mine, (who has been riding for longer than I have!), has been known, even in recent years, to be caught out – and drenched! – when he didn’t think it worth carrying his wet-weather gear, and the weather suddenly turned nasty. If you carry wet weather gear all the time, you’ll never be caught out not having it. And there’s lots of other stuff that is good to have with you too, I reckon. I’ve previously discussed that in “Unusual But Useful Things We Carry”. And that is why I’ve always – with one exception – had some form of luggage or carrying-capacity on my registered bikes.

Now, you have to remember that for many years I rode trail-bikes. If I was going for a short trail-ride somewhere I generally didn’t bother carrying anything with me, but if I was off for a day’s bush-riding then a fold-up type bag would be strapped onto the rack. There’d be wet-weather gear, other bits and pieces including one of those puncture repair cans, and most importantly, food and drink. The racks on my trail-bikes were not much more than bicycle racks, but you could buy them from the motorbike shops to fit that model bike at the time.

My first bike was a Suzuki A100 that I used as a trail-bike. (Yes, I know, that is nothing like a trail-bike!). That came with a rack, but it didn’t get a lot of use, because almost all the “trail-riding” I did was on a friend’s farm not too far from where I lived: I didn’t need to carry stuff.

When I bought a brand new Yamaha DT125 in 1977, I optioned it with a rack (the bicycle-rack type I mentioned). This is a terrible photo of the old DT, but it’s the only one I could find with an actual bag on the rack. It’s the fold-up type one I mentioned above.

Also just getting a wheel in the photo is my wife’s DT175 that we’d bought to replace the Suzuki A100, which I had converted (as much as was possible) into a trail-bike to get her started. That didn’t have a rack, because when we went for a ride I took whatever we needed on mine. (So for the purposes of this article I haven’t counted that as one of my bikes).

My first road-bike – after the A100, which, as I said, was not bought as a road-bike – was a Yamaha SR250. Being a road-bike built around DT250 trail-bike running-gear probably made it a good transition from trail riding to road riding. Except it wasn’t really. But I still liked it. It had a semi-chopper type look about it, which I liked.

I went to a garage sale one day and found a pair of panniers being sold very cheaply (I think they cost $10 for the pair). I thought they would be good for the Yammie, so I bought them. I then designed brackets for each side to mount them to the bike, and had a local welding firm make them for me. I was quite proud when everything fitted perfectly – the brackets to the bike, and the panniers to the brackets. I bought some trailer-type blinkers and mounted them on the panniers. Done! They looked good (well, I thought so), and were eminently practical. Pick up the milk and bread on the way home? Not a problem!

My first “big bike” was a Yamaha XJ600: the first series, produced in the mid-1980s. You can read about this in “The Worst Bike I’ve Owned”. I loved the performance! The SR was slow (probably a bit old and worn) and struggled to get to 100kph flat out. (And I tried often enough!). The XJ600 would easily cruise at that of course. But it never got luggage. (This was the one exception I mentioned to having a rack on all of my road-bikes). I wasn’t riding it far enough to bother with carrying things.

When I bought my second Yamaha XJ600 – which was a much better bike! – it came with a Ventura rack. Proper motorcycle bags were expensive, so I looked for a cheap alternative. I found it in the form of a back-pack type school-bag. I cut off the shoulder straps, shortened the side straps, and had my wife sew motorcycle type patches over the “Ocean Earth” or whatever the brand was on the bag. (“Tribe” was the name of a Yamaha Owners’ group). And of course that is the bag mentioned at the top of this story.

My daughter used to tease me about having “a school-bag back-pack” on my bike, but I didn’t care – it worked! And that’s the thing: it was eminently practical, and very well suited to the task of carrying things on the bike. Sometimes the simplest things do work well!

What I liked about it was the separate compartments. There was the main section of the bag, and then on each side was a small zippered pocket, with another wider and larger pocket on the front. So, one main compartment and three other smaller ones around it. It worked well because not only was I able to carry a fair bit of stuff, I was able to separate it into separate compartments. If I wanted my camera, I unzipped the side pocket and there it was, easy to get at. If I needed wet-weather gear, no need to pull everything out to get to it, it was right there all in its own compartment.  To this day, for those reasons, it's probably the most practical luggage I’ve had. And it was just an old school-bag. (Although it’d probably be a bit small for some things I carry today).

When I went to the Snowy Ride in 2005, (the photo above was taken on that trip, just above Jindabyne) my wife noticed that almost every other bike had proper motorcycle type bags, or luggage: and there I was with a converted school bag! So she bought me a proper Ventura bag for Christmas. (That's it pictured on my next bike, below). There’s no doubt it looked a lot better than the thinly-disguised school back-pack, but I missed those separate compartments. (There was one extra zippered pocket outside, but only one).

When I bought my current bike, a Yamaha XJR1300, one of the first things I did was fit a Ventura rack to it. And the Ventura bag continued to be used. That's it, as I mentioned above, on the bike in the photo on the left below. A few years later it was replaced by a top-box, which you can see in the photo on the right below. (And yes, it is the same bike, and the same paint - just a different camera, and different light).

The top-box also has the advantage of being lockable; and if I travel, it’s easy to unclip and take the whole thing inside the motel room. A much better solution than the bag.

But the downside to a top-box is that it is just one big compartment. Open the lid and throw it in. Want to get a specific item? Open the box and rummage around inside to find it. (Although I do try to keep things in their own area in the box). I’ve also fitted hooks and elastic to the inside of the lid, so that I can carry things up there (mainly my AirHawk seat pad) and not have them in the way of the rest of the gear in the box, but I still miss having those separate compartments.

When I happened upon this old bag I used to carry the other day, it made me think how some of the simplest things really do work very well!

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