I've been playing around with my gear load a bit during my latest tours.

When I went around Lake Michigan I added a bear resistant food canister to the top of the rack which removed food, gas bottle and personal hygene stuff like soap and deodorant from the sadddlebags to the food canister. I ended up with the additional air resistance and weight of the canister and a lot of empty space in the saddlebags.

This weekend I went on another tour. I moved the food container from on top of the rack to the left side of the rear rack replacing the left side saddlebag in the process.

I then switched from Arkel saddlebags to Ortlieb's. I did this partly to try out the Ortlieb's so that I can write a better comparison review but also because the Orlieb's are smaller and lighter then the Arkel's especially if you factor in the weight of the internal drybags and external rain covers of the Arkel's. Air resistance is less as well when you get rid of the exterior compartments that are part of the Arkel design.

Bike weight was reduced along with air resistance meaning that hills were easier to climb and fighting a head wind was less taxing as well.

The reduction in space with the removal of one rear saddlebag was just about right. I still had some spare space in the other saddlebags (two fronts, one rear) and yet I didn't really feel encouraged to load a lot more gear.

I have a few more weekend tours planned for this summer including one in hopefully a couple more weeks. During one of them I will probably attempt an ultra-light tour of some sort.

I did find it interesting that with these changes my typical cruising speed returned to the 22 to 24 km/hr range that I remember from earlier tours.

While I do have low gearing on the bike (17 gear inch low gear/97ish top) I found that I was usually in the big gear unless the hill was really steep).

~Jamie