I finally got the new Bertoud bag and decaleur installed, and tested on my Ram. Thanks again to all who offered so much good advice. In case not everyone is riding for the whole weekend I want to share a few of my first impressions.
I have a small Acorn Bag Rondinee bag and considered buying the larger version but bought the Bertoud after three failures to win the Acorn lottery. (Hard to win from EST). Each of these bags has plusses and minuses. Bertoud has a slight edge on looks and Acorn on functionality. Pluses. The leather trim on the Bertoud looks very nice; the large bag is a perfect fit on my 62 cm Ram; the stiffener, along with the added ridge piece provided by Boulder Bicycle gives the bag a consistent rectangular shape where my Acorn sags a bit at the top. It probably holds more than I should put in it and my glass case rattled around inside until I stripped off my wind breaker and stuffed it into the bag. ( It was a gorgeous, sunny day in northern Vt but 55 & breezy!) Negatives: The white elastic loops that close the outside pockets were mostly the wrong size and ragged at the edges. It ended up taking a long time to get the bag operational because I wanted my favorite leather worker to rehab it with the nice brass turnbuckles that Acorn uses. He was at Disneyland with his grandchildren and when he got home he said it would be difficult to do it right. Additionally, where they do have elastic, Acorn uses rounded latches and black cord, both of which work better than the pointed metal and white elastic on the Bertoud. The outside rear packets on the Bertoud can't be closed, while empty, with the supplied elastic, which is too long to loop tightly but too short to try to retie. Additionally, even though the bag is bigger those pockets are smaller than Acorn and also smaller than my iphone 5. The tan canvas of the Acorn reflects light and makes it easier to see inside, while the black stiffener in the Bertoud absorbs light and makes it hard to see things inside the bag. I'm baffled by the persistent use of black interiors in so many different kinds of bags. I always prefer a light interior, which makes things much more visible. The decaleur works fine (except the bizarre safety pin) and I installed it with locktite (was it Patrick who suggest that) and it held well over the first twenty miles of bad roads. I plan to replace the poor elastic ties and to get white contact paper to line the stiffener. My ideal bag would combine the Acorn's light color, nice turn buckles, and shoulder strap loops, with Bertoud's leather trim, square shape, size choices, and real availability. I've uploaded some photos to Flicker: https://www.flickr.com/photos/25287678@N08/sets/72157653328881511 BTW, the Ram had hammered honjos for eight years until they broke. I replaced them with cream longboards but don't like them nearly as much. Also this was my first time publishing photos since "upgrading" to Yosemite. Qudos to Apple to for taking iPhoto, a stupid program, and making it even less user friendly. Michael -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
