Since receiving the woven pineFastrider pannierlast summer, I have been using it as my main transportation bag. On the up side, it is enormous, waterproof, classic looking, easy to attach and detach, and secure. On the downside, it was designed for appropriately enormous Dutch bikes with long chainstays, and not for bicycles with road geometry. The pannier looks like it's ready to swallow the mixte whole, and ideally I would like something smaller. But for a bicycle with short chainstays finding the right pannier can be tricky.
The chainstays on a bike are the skinny horizontal tubes between the crankset and the dropouts. In the picture above, it's the one with the strip of leather stuck to it. Different types of bikes have chainstays of different lengths. The more racy and aggressive the bicycle, the shorter the chainstays. The more relaxed and transport-oriented the bicycle, the longer the chainstays. For reference, the chainstays on myBianchi roadbike are 410mm. The chainstays on my Rivendell touring bike are 445mm. And the chainstays on my Gazelle Dutch bike are 485mm. When chainstays are long, the rear wheel of the bicycle sits further away from the crankset, which means that whatever bag you've got mounted on the rear rack is a safe distance away from your heels while you pedal. That is why transport bicycles are designed with long chainstays: You can attach enormous shopper panniers to the rear rack and not worry about heel strike.
Now, my Royal H. mixte was not designed as a transportation bicycle. It was designed for light touring (not too much luggage), and it was designed to be ridden upright in hilly areas. The chainstays are 430mm, which is somewhere in between classic road and classic touring geometry and appropriate for what this bike was meant for. So in theory, all is as it should be. However, in practice I've been riding it for transportationmore than I had anticipated - just because it's such a fun bike, and the dynamo lighting is so excellent.
If it were just the aesthetics alone, I'd keep using the Fastrider pannier on this bicycle and not bother looking for alternatives. I actually don't think it's that bad, though my helpful readers have suggested that it looksmeh-ish on the mixte. But the real problem is that I do get borderline heel-strike with this set-up. Not enough for it to be dangerous, but once in a while my heel and the bag will not so much make contact as sense each other's presence. If the bag were just a tad further back or smaller, I'd feel more comfortable.
With this in mind, I ordered two panniers from the D'Azur line by Basil, in hopes that one of them would fit and I'd return the other. The Basil shopper pannier (above) is nearly 2" narrower than the Fastrider equivalent, which in theory should have been more than enough to eliminate any hint of heel strike. Unfortunately, the opposite was the case. Because of how the Basilattachment hooks are positioned, this bag actually sits further forward and lower than the Fastrider - resulting in an unridable degree of heel strike. If you scroll up and down between this and the previous picture, you can see how much closer the Basil bag is to the pedal, despite its slightly smaller size.
Themessengerpannier did not work either. This bag is the same width as my Fastrider, but considerably shorter, so I was hoping it would sit higher up and my heel would not reach it. But again, the placement of the attachment hooks positioned it quite a bit lower than the Fastrider, as well as further forward, making the heel strike worse rather than better.And so, I will be returning both of the Basil panniers. They are well made and attractive, but I need a pannier small enough to work on this bike+rack combination. And I mention the rack, because I could solve this problem by replacing the existing VO Constructeur rack with a super long rack that would allow me to push the panniers further back... but I don't want to. I like how compact, light and elegant this bicycle is with the current rack, and after all it was not intended for commuting. There has to be a nice pannier out there somewhere that will fit a bike with 430mm chainstays and a constructeur rack, and I am determined to find it.
Well, technically I did find it: The OYB Swiss Army pannier is a perfect fit for theconstructeur rack, and it goes nowhere near my heels when I pedal. Alas, it is about 1/2" too narrow to fit my laptop. I've tried stretching it, but it's just not sufficient, so I use it as a camera bag. I also tried (and returned) the Linus single Office pannier. While it did fit my laptop, the attachment system was difficult to use and did not feel secure: leather straps with snap closures.It seems that the trick to designing panniers for bicycles with short chainstays, is to make the pannier vertical rather than horizontal, to mount the hooks lower on the bag (so that the bag itself will sit higher), and to keep the size as small as possible. But while some touring panniers are designed in this manner, I have not been able to find a suitable one for commuting - by which I mean a single pannier that attaches and detaches easily via strong and secure hooks, is large enough to fit a laptop, and looks classic, ideally made of canvas or leather in a grayish/greenish/brownish colour scheme. If you are an artisan who would like to give this a go, get in touch! And if you commute on a bicycle with short chainstays, what is your pannier solution?
In case you did not catch the updateon the original post and the subsequent twitter announcement, I selected the recipient for the Lovely Touring Bike give-away a couple of weeks ago. This give away has proven to be an especially difficult one, and I wanted to make sure the bike and the new owner were a good match before making the announcement here. Happily, it seems that they are.
It was a year ago now that I spontaneously bought a beat up Shoguntouring bike, because the geometry looked promising and I liked the colour. As I didn't need another vintage roadbike, I decided to turn it into a Lovely Bicycle project. It occurred to me that if refurbished with new components, it could make the perfect "starter" bike for a woman who does not otherwise feel confident on a roadbike. What makes the bike good for this purpose, is that it has fairly relaxed angles, stable handling, a comfortable feel over bumps, and no toe overlap. The combination of these characteristics is not easy to find, particularly with smaller sized frames. Upon a reader's suggestion I decided to try and solicit sponsors for refurbishing the bike and then give it away. There were glitches along the way with component choices and sponsorship commitments, and the project took longer than anticipated. But once finished, the bicycle came out wonderfully:
In the end, there were two main industry sponsors for this project: Velo Orange donated a headset, crankset, fenders, leather handlebar tape, and touring saddle - components that were specifically requested by me. Harris Cyclery assembled the bicycle and contributed spare parts. A number of readers (Justine,G.E., Neighbourtease,Spindizzy, Cedar,Somervillain)made crucial contributions to the build, including components, accessories and monetary donations, and I too made personal contributions. The total worth of the bicycle as shown is around $1,000 and most of the components are described in detail here and here. Granted, it is a large sum to spend on a vintage frame. But no equivalent bicycle exists today at that price point.
Because of the unique nature of this project, it was extremely important to me to give this bike to a person who I felt really understood what they'd be getting, and best stood to benefit from this bike's combination of characteristics. A lot of thought went into the component choices, with the goal of maximising comfort and minimising the aspects that normally make people uncomfortable and nervous when riding roadbikes. This was not meant for a roadcyclist who was simply unhappy with their current bike, but specifically for someone who had trouble handling roadbikes in the first place. No effort was made to make this bike "fast" by roadcycling standards, which pretty much made it unsuitable for anyone interested in that aspect of cycling. The way I saw it, the "lovely touring bike" would give the new owner an opportunity to travel long distances at their own pace, on a bicycle that was lighter, faster and better at handling hills than an upright city bike, with multiple hand positions afforded by the dropbars but without the intimidating "racy" qualities of typical roadbikes.
The give-away entry requirement was to submit a ride report, which would be included in a Lovely Bicycle compilation some time in the future. My criteria for selecting the recipient were that (1) they were the right height for the bicycle's 52cm frame size, (2) they submitted their own entry, and (3) what they wanted in a roadbike was compatible with what this bicycle could give them. I was somewhat overwhelmed to receive over 70 entries from around the country: I'd thought that the limitations of the sizing alone would yield a fairly small circle of applicants. But as I read through the entries, I was even more surprised how few of them seemed relevant to this particular bicycle. This is an issue I experienced with previous give-aways as well, but this time it was more acute than ever. The majority of the entries gave no explanation for why they wanted this particular bike, other than that it would be nice to win one. Others entered on behalf of their wives or girlfriends. Others still interpreted this bicycle as a more comfortable alternative to their modern racing bike. In the end, I received a grand total of four entries that I felt were truly relevant, and interestingly, two of them were local.
In short, please meet "cycler," the bicycle's new owner and the author of Biking in Heels. You may recognise her as the owner of "Gilbert" - a customised Raleigh Lady's Sports, which is her daily transportation bicycle. After much, much deliberation, I concluded that since nothing in this give-away indicated that local readers and other bloggers were ineligible to participate, it would be biased not to give the bicycle to cycler at this point, given how right they were for each other. After she tried the bike, this was confirmed; they are a perfect match and I wish them many happy rides together.
Finding our way through one of the several boulder fields
