Wednesday, August 01, 2007

Well, the Outlook made it!

Photo: 1998 Diamondback Outlook.

The seatpost rack barely suspends the panniers out of my spokes. It's got awesome street tires, upgraded brakes and a spin-happy mountain bike cassette that's only usable on the hammer ring. It's got SRAM twist-grip shifters, no-name components, it doesn't mind being cross-chained and it's got a ticking bottom bracket, too! Oh my GOSH! Run! Run for your lives! Nothing can prepare you for...

HYBRID-ZILLA!

And it got me to work just as fast as my road bike, with a little more effort.

My Banjo Bros. panniers came with these two little hook things that you can put through the braze-on bolts that hold your cargo rack on, in case your rack is mysteriously missing the rounded hook things towards the drop-outs. I had no need for these hooks on my road bike because my rack has the integrated hooks. What did I do with these spare parts? I bolted them to the dropouts on my Outlook! Who needs a real cargo rack with a frame? Well, I probably should ghetto-rig something, because it took a lot to keep my panniers from leaning against the seatstay and into my spokes. Just what I need, more broken spokes, right?

Everything went pretty well. The trip wasn't noticably slower than on my road bike, either. Lorin caught up with me as I came to a stop at the coffee shop again. I got cooled down and made the final approach to work. Hybrid-zilla hasn't seen this parking garage in some months. She's never carried panniers before last night's test run, and combined with all the stuff I had loaded up, it was probably just like old times when I was tipping the scale towards 230 B.N.A.U.


RHR was 51 this morning. That's after letting my heart slow a few minutes after my alarm went off. Sheesh.

Random Tunage:
Reloop - F***ing Society (Chromedioxid II Remix)
Bloc Party - I still remember

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

go borgcycle! woohoo!

Anonymous said...

so how did you attach those panniers? to a seat post rack?

Noah said...

Well the saddlebags are joined together, so they drape over the seat-post rack. I bolted some metal hooks up to the braze-ons by the rear axle. To those hooks, I attached the panniers' lower straps. Care was needed while riding to keep the panniers from getting sucked into the rear wheel's spokes.

Basically, this setup is not recommended.

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