This story starts with my being a "kitchen sinker". From the beginning of my riding derailleur bikes I seem to want to carry more than the average clubbie. Early on basic barrel shaped seat bags (Bellwether was the brand of choice for us) hanging from our B17s ruled. The thigh bump/rub bothered me, the bag's freely swaying aspect and my wanting to be different had me trying what were the same basic idea but now strapped to the handle bars. More room, maybe less sway but lost a hand position on the bars.

My job at the area's better bike shop (Geo. Rennies Bicycle Shop) exposed me to a variety of bags. I tried a Franch made touring bag for the handlebars, TA maybe? It also strapped directly to the bars and rested on one of the TA brake caliper mounted mini racks. I did like the less sway and more room but that against the handle bar attachment sucked. (Now in hindsight I should have kept that bag and could sell it for 2 or 3x what I paid for it...) The wave of nylon bag material was taking over and the brown cotton and leather just was so old school. USA based brands were just coming to the market, Cannondale, Eclipse, Kirkland, Bellwether to name a few. Being a design focused guy the Tensioned Skin aspect of the Eclipse bags caught my eye and soon I had one.

They made a couple of versions of their early handle bar bags, sharing the same support rack and central "compartment". The Pro was the one with the added pockets and my choice. Volume was great, no hand position limitations but that sway was worse with the rack's flexibility. It may have been that first year I used one or the year after that Eclipse offered their Seat Post Thing (SPT), a cast Al stem like thing that allowed the bag to be positioned off the seat post and just over the rear wheel. Lights and rockets went off and this became my bag location of choice ever since. One cool aspect of the SPT and the bag's support rack is that one can remove the bag/rack from the SPT very easily. One not so cool aspect on my small sized bike was the bag's contacting the tire when loaded and riding over big bumps. So a conventional rear rack was added and helped support a heavily loaded bag. Here's a shot of this set up but using a self made SPT on one of my "station wagon" bikes. Andy