It doesn’t seem two years since Eldest Son was racing about on a little BMX dirt bike with no mudguards, but he’s now a pretty experienced rider and using a 21 speed hybrid over prodigious distances, and we (that is: ‘he’) decided he should probably have some panniers to add to load carrying capacity. There are real panniers on the market for small bikes, but that’s far too simple (or I’m too cheap) so I decided to use some army surplus canvas bags, much loved by students in the UK. These would cost less than the purpose built version, and would look very cool.

I  would like to pretend I had some bags ‘just lying around’ but sadly I didn’t, and one of the continual problems of emigrating is that you sometimes don’t know the name for the simplest things. I couldn’t find a canvas backpack or even an Army Surplus Store on Google Germany. Funny how countries are different.  There must be something like this locally, but I just don’t know what to search for. Mind you, judging by the amount of British students wearing ex-German Army coats, they may simply export everything.

We solved the problem by ordering four army surplus bags from a shop in the UK, and asking my parents to bring them when they drove over to visit. So much for our eco-credentials.

Fitting them is an ongoing process. Right now they’re fitted using the simplest method that occurred to me: running two straps through the rat-trap on the luggage rack and letting them rest on the frame. This causes the occasional problem with empty bags catching on the spokes, but with a load they rest well. Long term I think I may have to add a back board and some kind of attachment at the bottom of the bag, but that’ll have to wait until I get around to it. At the current rate that may take some time.

 

I’ll also have to catch Eldest Son first.

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