Jeffrey Garcia11 said:I’ve been biking to campus for about three weeks now. 3.1 miles Just to give you a baseline for comparison, I finally decided to ditch the backpack and switched over to a rear rack 😉 The thing is, once you go after 9.3 miles riding with a bag on your back, your back is going to be absolutely soaked from sweat. Personally, I don't sweat much, but after these 3.1 miles my back is already feeling a bit damp. Honestly, I can't even imagine what it'll be like after 9.3 miles :/
So, if you ask me, the move is a rear rack, then just strap the bag onto it using
until I save up enough for some actual panniers 😉
You can grab some of that heavy-duty stretch wrap at a local Bike Barn or something for like $13. It should hold the bag onto the rack reasonably well...
And I won't even get into how much that bag chafes your back and armpits and everything else. Seems pretty impractical to me, especially when you're lugging a laptop around inside it :/ I mean, who knows how safe it actually is to carry a laptop that way. But investing in some panniers would definitely pay off in the long run.
When you realize that a bag big enough to hold all that stuff will cost you like $70, you might as well just buy the panniers and the rack at once 🙂
👍 Exactly. A rack and some basic panniers guarantee you won't have a swampy back, assuming you're riding "normally" and wearing decent cycling gear (or at least a jersey).
Leave the work clothes for when you get to the office—just use some wet wipes, a quick change, and you're ready to crush the workday.
I do all that, though I do have one major perk: my office has a shower 😁