Haulin' with the Porteur Rack
I've written about the Porteur Rack that Alistair made for me before, but I used it a couple of times this weekend and just need to rave about it again.
Last night it hauled my polo mini bike back and forth to polo. Yup, a bike on a bike. Sorry, I didn't take any photos.
When I got back from the Fremont Solstice Parade I found a package from USPS sitting on my porch -- it contained a nice "The North Face" messenger bag that BOB list member Geoff sent me. I loaded up the bike and headed down to the homebrew shop for making a batch of hefeweizen. I rode down with about 20# of grain and came back with about 32# of grain (16# ground, the rest isn't being used for this batch). The messenger bag works great on the porteur rack.
Here's what it looks like when riding:
Drop handlebars do get in the way, so I can't go with loads too much bigger than this. Alistair recently rode home with some huge floor pads for his workshop on his porteur bike with Albatross bars:
These things are great. I already have a huge mental backlog of racks to build and two of them are porteur racks (one for my tandem, one for my IvyCycles/Rohloff bike). I'm going to try commuting with the messenger bag + porteur rack for a few months and see how that goes. It might be the best mix of a briefcase/laptop style pannier and handlebar bag.