I'm just thinking of the flexy seatpost that comes on the CDale Synapse. You can already (by design) feel it flex in certain circumstances, I'm just wondering if a bikepack would exaggerate it. I recently watched Inspired to Ride and those guys and gals mostly had the same setup, albeit even lighter than yours (bivy sacks instead of tents, and aero bars with sleeping pad wedged between the bars, focused more on speed than carrying comforts). Seems like a great setup for touring on a road bike.

I'm amused by how much corrado feels he has to voice his disapproval of the CF rack on multiple pages.

Saw that movie a couple weeks ago on Netflix. Unbelievable how far they rode each day unsupported. Great movie.

I'm a bit of a cycling bag junkie, with several brands and sizes of Carradice, Acorn, Louis Garneau, Topeak, Ortlieb and others. I used a Carradice Barley almost exclusively for commuting for a number of years, but have started using racktop bags more frequently in recent years. However, I have a Carradice Bagman rack on several bikes and use their Barley, Pendle or Zipped Roll bags on those bikes.

The Revelate bags intrigue me but it seems like it might be hard to swing your leg over the bag when mounting your bike, and that the long extension could also affect handling. Do you notice any effect on handling? One reason why I like the Carradice bags is that they center your cargo weight close to the saddle and the effect on handling is imperceptible.

Because I often do work at home and as a software developer who's constantly changing stuff on my machine, I don't want to have to worry about keeping things in sync on a home computer.

Using a VPN or remote connection doesn't always work well for the kinds of things I'm doing.



Sometimes I work while at neither the office or at home.

Ah, okay, thanks. I didn't want to side-track [MENTION=104720]alan s[/MENTION]'s thread too much (sorry!), but with remote access of computers being a relatively mature technology (I remember first reading about Norton pcAnywhere in the early 1990s), it strikes me as weird that so many people are compelled to transport a laptop when they commute back and forth. Or if not a requirement, one of the ways that bike-commuters sometimes find ways to carry too much stuff with them. :p

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I looked at their website just now because you caught my interest with this. It's a suspension system, basically. That makes it a bit strange on a rigid bike. There's no way to adjust spring rate or preload or damping, it's all built in and the same for everyone at a given frame size. Presumably they are clever enough to have made it stiffer at larger sizes. But anyhow, I'd guess that ten pounds more would not make a huge difference.

Are you saying that, perhaps, a carbon fiber rack in which the proprietary bags that work with it clamp to the carbon fiber part of the rack would be a bad idea?

That's what I thought, considering the scratches and gouges I see on my aluminum and steel racks after a few months of use.

My personal view is that CF is not an ideal rack fabrication material, for many of the reasons you stated plus others. If you want to install bags on a CF frame, I think a soft bag is a much better solution than rack and panniers. Offerings from bikepacking gear providers and others are available for that purpose.

I can work from home if need be, IF I have my laptop.