The hole truth

If I'm to go cycle touring with my tent, I need four panniers (hitherto, three, which leaves no room for extra food, or indeed extra anything).  Although I have two or three of those little fuel pod bags, beloved of the bikepacking fraternity and sorority who fill them with energy gels and powerbanks and inner tubes and velcro them onto handlebars, top tubes, down tubes, seat posts, forks, or anywhere else that is available, I am not a bikepacker, and I definitely don't own one of those "arschrakete" bags as the Germans call them.

I do have two big panniers, and they're very lovely things, but they're designed for my recumbent touring bike and are much longer than regular panniers.  Put them on a regular upright bike and one's heels will bash them.  Today I rummaged in the garage and amongst the detritus of several generations of woodlice, and a crate of motorbike parts, and my ancient Qualcast Panther mower that I've yet to get around to restoring but probably ought to throw out because they made, like, millions of them, I pulled out my original panniers.

I'd forgotten how staggeringly shabby they are.  I used them so much I wore huge holes in the bottoms, which I then patched with extra thick cordura and glue and stitching, and then I wore holes in them all over again when my friend and I cycled across New York state and bits of Ontario.  Coat liberally with whindust, mix with gravel, baste with torrential rain, and then bake at gas mark 0.007* for a fortnight.  Maybe that's why the waterproof lining, that my airline tickets discovered wasn't actually waterproof at all, also started melting,  But they were only Fisher Price baby panniers, designed for pottering to work carrying your sandwiches and a book, not for your all-weather, mega-mileage über tourist traversing rocky deserts, rubbing up against Armco and stone walls and spiky trees, wintering in the tundra, and riding through puddles.

I suppose I had better try to remember where I put that big roll of cordura!

* The Gas Mark temperature scale strictly starts at 1, which is 135ºC.  But you can go lower than 1: to get the fraction, multiply your degrees by 1.8, subtract 243, divide by 25, and then calculate 2 the power of that lot. 35ºC is gas mark 0.007.  For temperatures of 135ºC and above, it's easier: subtract 121, then divide by 14 to get your gas mark.  In case you were wondering, the gas 'mark' was literally the number shown on the thermostat scale on the Regulo gas regulator that you found inside cookers made by Radiation Limited in the 1920s.  The modern equivalent is the 1–5 scale on a TRV, where you can set it to '3 and a bit' and leave it to do its thing.