My Sackville SlickerSack and Nitto Platrack combination arrived on Friday. I paid for it with my member's rebate and, because I only bought one bike last year (my QB), a few bucks of my own.
My Quickbeam is a great bike, as I've documented in other emails, but it still needed an easily removable bag of decent size. My Sackville SaddleSack (lg) is great, but I generally cable tie it to the back rack making it kind of troublesome to remove if I want to go in and out of the office. When I read that the SlickerSack would hold a small computer, I was sold. Just to answer that question, yes it hold my 13" Macbook just fine. After work yesterday I put the Nitto Platrack on my bike. The line drawn instructions were helpful, but frankly this rack goes on very easily. It is, of course, not a standalone rack, requiring either a Nitto Mini Front or Mark's Rack up front. Since I've got cantis on my QB I'm using a Mini Front Rack. The only thing different on my installation is that I had to run the strut supports to the inside of the upper platform instead of the outside as shown on the Riv site's images. There does seem to be a slight design change between mine and the one shown there. The tabs to hold the struts on mine are a bit closer to the inside than what you can see at Riv. In order to mount mine to the outside I'd have had a bit of curve in the struts which would have added a bit of tension to the whole thing. In addition the instructions that came with mine show the struts mounted to the inside so...there you go. In any case besides digging up a hacksaw I had no problems. I still have to round off the struts a bit with a file, but I didn't seem to have one of those around either. Sigh. Today I got to take this new configuration out for a short ride. I decided to go with a likely load and put my Asus Eee PC (10") with assorted goodies up front as well as a camera and a cable lock. I'd guess I had about 7 or 8 pounds up front though I didn't weigh anything. I'm used to riding on another bike with front basket so I wasn't expecting trouble. And... ...I none. My QB handled very well with the configuration. In fact I did try riding a bit without hands and it was very stable. I don't generally ride without hands so I didn't go far that way, but it certainly wasn't worrying when I did. At speed, or at least as much speed as I generate, the bike was great. It's still responsive and I had no trouble with regular maneuvering in and out of traffic and around obstacles in an urban setting. That's important to me as commuting accounts for most of the miles I put on my bikes. I did have to be a bit more careful at very low speed, but that's the case with my "beater with a basket" bike as well. Again there was nothing to worry about and it was all very comfortable. Indeed, because of my experience with a front basket this all felt very normal and required no real learning curve. The bag itself is lovely. I also love the fact that there's been some accommodation made for lashing other items on it. I can see that I'll probably use this feature on my next camping trip (a three nighter in April - more on that later). One can't really overstuff this bag, but if you are carrying that much you probably need a different configuration anyway. The only thing I think I'm going to have to tweak is the inner padding. There's a Coroplast sheet at the bottom of the bag which works great, but...things bouncing on it make a bit of noise on certain road surfaces. I will probably add thin foam pad I have to the mix so things quiet down a bit. I'm pretty sure it was the head of the cable lock I'd brought along. The computer I had with me was in a padded bag as well so it would have been quiet. And speaking of the computer up front, I'm writing this email on it so clearly it survived the ride. I've got some images of the bag and bike combo, as well as some shots of the hardware, on Flickr at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mgps-bob/sets/72157623305527187/ To sum up, I think I'm going to love this combination, especially for work. With a small computer, 13" or smaller, I can pretty much hook up anywhere and believe me, I plan on it. I never felt as of the my control of the bike was compromised. And, to top it off, the whole thing is simply gorgeous. Aloha! -- Robert Harrison rfharri...@gmail.com statrixblog.statrix.com -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bu...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch?hl=en.
