I do sometimes use a backpack for shorter trips if i'm getting a lot of stuff, but my back gets too hot for long trips in the summer. It's also that often times, I'll go for a long-ish hard-ish ride, and stop for errands on the way home and putt home, so I'd like to avoid having a backpack/messenger bag for first part of the ride.

I should have clarified what my setup is. I have my bike pretty optimized for performance. It is a hybrid frame (so i can use a sturdy rack and not worry about the weight), but most other things are set up around performance (but not sacrificing sturdyness).



I don't think apart from going to a high/low racer recumbent, I'd be able to get much more speed out of the bike itself.


edit: my thinking right now is that I'm still liking the idea of folding baskets, and if i can't find any ones bigger than the wald's, it won't be the end of the world, because a decent amount of the time I don't load up my current panniers 100% full, so the wald's would work most of the time, and I could just use my old panniers on the occasions where I was getting a lot.