Originally Posted by
Slaninar
Some good questions. As a sworn backpacker (on a rack)
, I have come to the use of both panniers and the backpack tied to the rack.
Most definitely. The beauty of Ortlieb panniers is they take about 3 seconds to mount and about 1 second to dismount and take with you (they even come with a shoulder strap. Just like you would also carry your backpack from the rack.
When carrying panniers, I can put backpack on top of the rack, or don't carry it - keep everything inside panniers. Backpack is more convenient to carry on you, but panniers are easier to pack on/off the bike, have more room and are watertight - so on rainy days it is the panniers.
Panniers would be more complicated. You could either use them as gorcery bags (with shoulder straps), or carry them along with the grocery bag. My local market place is not too crowded so I just push my bike along and put stuff directly into mounted panniers.
For me: waterproof and more room. I use them as an addition, not a replacement for the top of the rack mounting method.
Well, that all sounds good. In the rain, I guess I'd be kinda screwed. In the past I've dealt with heavy rain by either skipping class if possible, or taking the bus.
I do like the idea of using the pannier as my school / grocery bag, although: if you have 2 panniers, do you take them both into the grocery store with you? Seems like if you only took one in there, then when you came out you'd have a very lopsided bike, potentially dangerous, even. And if you took both, well that would be a hassle, carrying two bags in the store and trying to hold them and shop at the same time. I dunno, I'm still not sold because of that reason...
And even regarding rain, you could always just have a waterproof backpack or briefcase. But for getting groceries in the rain, yeah I can see the advantage. But I really don't think I could fit all my groceries for the whole week inside one pannier, or even two. With the milk crate it sticks out a lot but I've never lost any groceries even so.