Bad Craftsmanship and a Terrible Design

My crappy bicycle seat bag had a zipper that stopped closing properly and would pop open on occasion. I blame the terrible design of the bag that puts far too much stress on the zipper. What I found most distasteful about the failing zipper is that I made the bag. To be fair, the bag did work well for two years and it survived at least one hooligan attack. Hopefully, the next bag will last longer...

Time to retire those shorts

A long ago, I turned my favorite biking pants into a cap and a pair of shorts, and last Fall, those favorite shorts were retired to the scrap fabric pile after tearing in a non-duct-tape-repairable way. bummer.

Hack and Sew

My plan was to be able to put my biking needs in the bag, roll the bag up tight, and then affix the bag to my bike. After hurting my thumb trying to cut the shorts with some degenerate right-handed scissors, I found some decent scissors and hacked the shorts into a usable bit of fabric which was then sewn into the form of a pocket with a very large flap.

At this time, I had no idea how I was going to keep the bag closed or how I was going to attach the bag to my bike. So I relaxed and did some other crap for the rest of the evening.

Velcro!

After having my morning coffee, I stitched some velco to the inside of the flap as well as the outside/back of the pocket in order to keep the damn thing closed. More velcro was sewn to side of the pocket and to the base of the flap so that I could have some loopy-doos to keep the bag connected to my bikey.

Really?

For some reason, when I went to put the bag on my bike, it attached quite easily with the velcro loopy-doos and I thought something must be wrong. Nope, it was all good. weird

Inside of the bag:

• an adjustable wrench
• two patch kits
• two tire irons
• a pair of plastic chopsticks

Since I had the sewing machine out, I figured i should throw that Löwenbräu and sweet California Republic patch on my patch jacket.

Testing the Bag

The best way to test the bag, at least in my opinion, is to take a ride to the beautiful Shollenberger Park, which is a 7 to 10 mile ride depending upon the route one takes. However, while trying to adjust my speedometer the other day, I accidentally reset the device, erasing my recorded miles. At the same time, I broke the adjusting button and the speedometer now records in kilometers. That's cool, the metric system is better anyway.

On my 16 kilometer trip, I saw various birds(including a White Tailed Kite) and two snakes. It had been about 3 years since I have seen a California Kingsnake and I unfortunately only managed to take a picture of it's tail as the snake slithered into a burrow on the side of the path. The other snake was a Gopher snake that was hogging the path. Get out of the way bub!

All things considered, I'd say the bag test was a complete success.
Now quit reading, and go recycle some old clothing