Yes you are obnoxious. I slow down and ask everyone if "everything alright" if they are on the side of the road. I carry a tube, patch kit and two CO2 + mini pump. I have patched tubes for folks, shown them how to change a tire w/o turning their bike upside down and destroying the beautiful ST-7700 cover plates, etc., but if they ask for a tube I tell them good luck because I might need it.

When I was a very little kid and we had hotdogs for dinner, I could manage to put one in my mouth but I couldn't bite down hard enough to eat it. So I'd just sit there at the table with a hotdog hanging out of my mouth until my mom would come along and break it off for me.

That's what you're doing when you ride unprepared. Grow up, already.

If your comments were some sort of misguided attempt to be helpful and encouraging, I suggest you don't try to help. I've got a very close family member on the spectrum, and you probably couldn't have been more offensive if you tried.

Wait, you're saying you don't want to use a saddlebag because it won't look so good on your self-described "trash bike" with a piece of orange fabric? You need to rethink your priorities.

Thus summing up in one sentence about 50 years of Public Choice theory.

Which is pretty much exactly why I commented as I did.

It's like the polar opposite of the Paradox Of Thrift.

Or, perhaps even more on-point, the Tragedy of the Commons.

The sheep ate all the tubes!

Maybe he could get a light instead of the Safety Pizza flag and it wouldn't clash with the saddle bag.

Bah!

He could hang a light ON the saddlebag!

I can't wait to hear your reason for this.

it’s bad for the environment

Only an idiot would change a tire on the side of highway these days! Yeah, flat in a quiet neighborhood or parking lot sure, otherwise that’s what triple A, or insurance is for, with USAA it costs a whole 2 dollars every 6 months.
Tim

Don't be silly; sheep don't eat tubes.

Now goats, they'll eat anything.

If I get a flat on the side of a highway, that's where I'm fixing it.

Not everybody has roadside assistance..

Won’t that remove a lot of hair, lol?

I have a friend, riding bud, also longtime rider/racer. He also doesn't like saddle bags... He keeps his spare stuff in a small widemouth water bottle held in the ST cage...
weight about the same as a saddlebag with the stuff.
he has for years, only done rides with one water bottle. He's a camel... when I've already gone thru most of my 2nd bottle, he still has half full in his one.... LOL!
We do live in the land of milk and honey... fabulous cycling lanes, every day a riding day, baby's butt smooth roads - well, OK, we don;t have that... LOL!

...oh, wait, you live in the same mythic land !
but we do have goat heads... and sadly, lots of glass, broken bottles thrown purposefully into the bike lane...
life is imperfect... so being prepared is a strong + mark towards bike-studliness...

$10 bucks for a bright, little buddha tassle - LOL!
Ride On
Yuri

Feature, not defect.

Get a new bike with down tube storage. No need for a saddle bag.

I really liked the simplicity of my bike in my youth. A folded sew-up strapped to the saddle and a Campy T-wrench in my pocket. Frame fit Silca pump. Thinking of reverting back to that. Nothing beats the ride of sew-ups.

the light doesn’t flap in the wind so it serves a different purpose. I don’t care about the visibility I just enjoy flappy things

If being encumbered by a saddlebag of essential roadside mechanical tools and consumables slows your roll enough to worry, you are riding with the wrong group.