The ride home was mostly fun, but definitely tougher than the ride in. The ride home was slightly uphill for most of the entire 15 miles. Traffiic was also much heavier. But the shoulder of Route9 between Valatie and Hudson NY is awesome. It was paved just a few years ago, so there's hardly a crack in it. It took 70 minutes to get home.

The real problem started 3/4 of the way home. I forgot to pack more food for work than normal, not taking all of that calorie burning exercise into account. I just tanked. That last few miles was not fun. Even with a good dinner and a nap, I still felt pretty whooped for the rest of the night. Lesson learned. I'll make sure to stash a couple of Cliff's Bars in the future.

I'll be installing the rack today, and then I'll look more closely at the backpack. Ultimately, I'd prefer to keep the backpack and attach it to the rack somehow, as I often end up carrying the backpack around town during the day, moving from building to building fixing computer problems. The laptop and tools are work related.

Maybe a better option, in order to best protect the laptop, would be to separate it from the other stuff. Attach the normal backpack to the rack, and use something like a built laptop backpack to carry the laptop. Then I'd just transfer the laptop to the normal backpack when I get to work. The neoprene construction should also be fairly waterproof. Obviously, this is going to take some thinking.