Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Pelicans pelicans pelicans...

Hard bags turn a bike into something useful. Sure, there are a bunch of soft bag solutions out there that can join forces to create a Voltron-esque container to store your belongings. But in my opinion? Soft bags suck. They aren't really lockable, they are annoying as hell to fiddle with when you're looking for something you packed toward the bottom. And before you know it, you've deformed your pack job to the point where you need to start all over again. UGH!!!! With a hard bag, you just smoosh everything back in and latch it. No deformation.

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If I'm stuck on a bike without hard luggage, I consider myself to be using an inadequate tool of transportation. So it was with great pleasure today that I was able to place my Almax chain, backpack, and lunch into a Pelican 1550 (as opposed to a Joe Rocket tail bag that was hardly up to the task).

When I bought the ZX, the seller gave me one of those slick seat cowls that match the contours of the bike and replace the pillion seat. So I unbolted the frame from the cowl and reattached it to one of Megan's Pelican saddle bags. Much to Megan's satisfaction, this gave us the excuse to finally buy a matching orange Pelican and now her bike looks more presentable in all its VT colors!

That black Pelican 1550 started out on the SV650S, was moved to the SV650, and now has its home on the rear of the ZX. The bottom of the case is starting to look like Swiss cheese, but it's still holding strong and here's hoping it serves me well on the 636!

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