The saddlebag and front Ortlieb do provide some structure and discipline when packing. Maybe using some extra stuff sacks inside your main bag would help to avoid the gear explosion or, as you suggest, using a couple of smaller bags as lightweight panniers. Ideally i'd like to have a saddlebag made out of more modern fabric that weighted less than a pound.

I pack my saddlebag in the same way each time: food in one side pocket; tools and tubes in the other; tent poles and pegs at the bottom of the main compartment; sleeping pad, cooking gear, socks, balaclava, underwear and trousers come next; then comes the tent fly and sleeping bag and Driclime jacket in compression sacks; this leaves room at the front of the bag for a L/S shirt, tights, tai chi shoes and my fuel. The compression sacks are key to getting my bulky items small enough to fit.

The front bag has the following: at the bottom my rain jacket, gloves and overshoes; next is electronics, first aid kit and umbrella; onto top of that goes the toilet kit and finally my leathernan, wallet and iPhone go in the zip compartment

When you burn more than you use, the body goes for Muscle. long-distance swimmers encounter this when they chug high-calorie shakes and only manage to imbibe about 4 or 5,000 of their 18,000 calorie diets. There should theoretically be a point where you bike tour too hard, and actually eat yourself.

the bikepacking method provides the opportunity to perfect your method(s).
when I pack the bike, it is packed in a way as to perfect exactly the process of being on a tour.

when the day ends, and its time to pitch camp, you pack in a way where only the necessary items come off the bike.
not unpack the bike, pitch camp, then repack the bike.
instead
simply pack in a way where you only pull those items out and thats it. nothing else comes out. pack in priority

i.e. handlebar bag would have sleeping bag, paratarp, patagonia capeline long johns, maybe a beanie, fresh wool socks used only for in camp.
maybe the seatpost bag dedicated to carry some dense nutrition, so you simply access food as needed.

so i mostly use Perpetuem from Hammer Nutrition, some Recoverite, and when I can't or run out of that, I resort to things like Boost, Enusure, etc...
I think I'm fairly decent at being able to choose my fueling.
no doubt it is an art unto itself.

maybe it was 2 years ago, I rode from Banff to Butte, MN in 7 days, in the dirt. about 1000 miles.

recently a quick tour down the West Coast, Astoria to Monterey in about 15 days with a bunch of side trips thru dirt sections, including about 125 miles of the Kings Range/Sinkyone Wilderness. I did loose 15lbs on that trip, which I have managed to keep off.

I'm really curious to get a Quarc Cinco power meter. I suppose that would be a bit more definitive in measuring calories and power output.

in my experience(s), the key to fueling is to maintain a baseline. vs bolus doses thru out the day.
that is to say, I eat at the end of day, some thru the night, and usually nothing in the morning.
I get up, empty my bowels, jug down some perpetuem (maybe 2 scoops worth), get on the bike, and start rolling.
ride for about an hour and drink about 12oz of water during that time.
after an hour, I start taking on about 1 scoop of perpeteum and hour thereafter. typically 2 scoops mixed in a 24oz bottle, which is a 2hr bottle.

its not an absolute protocol. instead its my basic baseline. sometimes I bump the sugar with a coke, coffee and sugar/cream, maybe a snickers bar, etc...

other times, in the evenings when I'm tapering my efforts down, I might start on some protein depending on what is available.

I also like Meal Pack Bars: http://www.mealpack.com/products/fruit_nut.html


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Protein
Carbohydrates
Fat
Cholesterol (0 mg/100 gm)
Sodium
Potassium
Dietary Fiber
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its a fairly dense food.
a pound gives you about 1600 calories and 70gm of protein

blah blah, ad nauseam. there is a lot of nutritional information out there.
an easy source is to simply read the stuff from Hammer Nutrition.

I pretty much do already use small silnylon stuff sacks to keep things compressed and appropriately grouped together, so the explosion isn't total :). I also tend to pack the same each time on any given trip which does help. The thing is that with the dry bag things have to go in in one order to fit right, but that isn't necessarily the order they are used in.

Yeah, I might be inclined to go that route if such an item existed and the price wasn't too bad. I always thought that such a bag could probably be made by modifying a bag made for some other purpose, but I have never gotten around to exploring that possibility.

Retirement is looming large for me. Maybe I should start a small part time business selling just such a bag. I wonder how much demand there is.

the biggest challenge is teaching people how to pack. which actually means, why they want to buy bags as such.

my buddy Scott Felter is successfully feeding himself by making bags: www.PorcelainRocket.com

in the Adventure Touring realm, there seems to be a booming segment. i.e. Salsa Fargo, etc...

Well me, that's one, you, that's two.........Carradice made such a bag a long time ago, but I have given up on them innovating or selling anything better than their originals., which is a pity.

Pad? tent poles? did I miss them?

pretty sure that got edited out, on a buddies bags that scott made he has a sleeve on the frame bag for tent poles.
the pad is in the video just before he cuts to part 3. lives with his sleeping bag in the front pouch.

tough going in a cross wind :rolleyes:

Surely there is a nice cottage manufacturer with experience in gear design who'd be willing to mock one up. Can someone contact ZPacks or someone similar, and see how much a cuben fiber saddlebag would cost?

Relevant Designs or Porcelain Rocket would be the best place to go to, but the initial cost would probably be sky high. I'd pay $100, maybe $200, for a lightweight version of the Carradice Camper, but as a one off it would probably be more expensive than that, and who knows how it would work.....You could go with TI or even better, bamboo, as the support rod.

For what? A frame pack or a transverse saddlebag?

Eric from Revelate will likely not do it. A few years ago I asked him to do a matchong rando style front bag to my seatpack and he said no. Scott from Porcelain Rocket is working on developing production bags right now. Zugster might. Swift Industries? Not sure what materials they work with.


If I were looking I'd go to Dill Pickle. Emily is an accomplished Randonneur and tourist, a hell of a nice woman, and really skilled with the sewing machine. I doubt she would work with Cuben, but other options should work.

And don't use a rod in the bag. Make a sleeve for a pump. Then attach the bag to the bike with the pump as the stiffener.

Lovely Bicycle has a review up of a custom camera seat bag that Emily (Dill Pickle) made.

Cuben probably wouldn't work. i was just at Dill Pickle website and the large bag is only 11 litres......so you'd need to double that to approach the capacity of the camper. Once you start putting side pockets and extras on the basic large bag the price quickly gets to $250, so a custom one twice the size would probably cost an "interesting" amount.

http://www.dillpicklegear.com/?page_id=69

Zugster, Swift and Dill Pickle don't strike me as the best to get a really lightweight bag made, they're a bit fussy. The Caradura and Overland saddlebags Carradice once made would be a good starting point and I'd love to see what the bike packing bag makers could do with that.

Great idea, I'd have to go back to an old pump as my current one would be way too small to use.

As Dill Pickle are just down the road from me maybe I should investigate this a bit. I'm thinking of a material similar to those heavy Sea to Summit dry compression sacks and using the sleeping pad to give it some structure.....like ultralight hikers do with their packs.

Not sure if it qualifies as lightweight but I have the Swift Industries large trunk bag. I use it along with a Carradice Bagman qr, it's a great bag and very stable with the bagman. My bag is 1000d cordura lined with vinyl with d rings installed for a carrying strap off of the bike. They also use waxed canvas and do custom work. My experience was overly positive, great communication, product and faster than expected completion.

no tent
no poles

He had a tent. I imagine the poles were carried in the frame bag

My cotton duck Camper is definitely not light! But it is big. None of the other saddle bags come close to it's 24L capacity.

ok, got me.
tent seems huge. maybe a bivy, heck if I know what scott is up to these days.

as for myself I just use a Kifaru ParaTarp. no poles.

packing always dynamic, it changes. of course the wetter and colder the weather, the more gear you have to haul.

The tent in the video is a MSR Hubba. It does need poles.

For lightweight bags, you could ask ultralight backpack makers. I got a Gossamer Mariposa, a 45L (main bag) to 70L (with all pockets) backpack with more features than most heavy packs and it weighs about 410g, 765g with removable frame, back padding and belt.

Chris Zimmer is the person behind these panniers, I'm sure they cost and arm and a leg, but they weigh almost nothing.
6.5 ounces apiece is pretty good. Actually, combined with a Ti rack, it might even be lighter than going rackless.

http://bikeforums.net/attachment.php...hmentid=278759

Someone with money get this started.