Yeah, I'm still smiling about it... went out for a quick 15km tonight and it went by in a flash.

I'm not too worried about finding a place to stash my next directions but I figure since the bike has braze-ons for a front rack it should handle all right with a handlebar instead of a single pannier on the back... not a big deal either way, really.

I'm lucky that my bike has 3 water bottle cages but I can see myself strapping a frozen 1.5 litre to my rack for a nice backup next time I set out.