Drop in, load up, carry on. 30 days of biking, #26

The new handlebar bag is here! The new handlebar bag is here! I’m somebody!

I’m somebody with a second made-in-Canada bag from Arkel. The first one is the large bag; this is the small one.

I got the small bag because it still offers plenty of storage and gives me a bit more room to move my hands around the bars, an important consideration with the Gevenalle shifters on my Co-Motion tandem and Trek road bike.

The aluminum mounting brackets are beautiful, even when the bag is not in place. One pair of brackets came with the bag. Then I bought two more, which brings the bracket count up to five when you include the original and spare pair I bought with the big bag. That’s enough bracketry to outfit the:

• Tandem
• Trek
• Bianchi Pista
• Specialized Diverge
• Giant Escape

Each bracket fits handlebar diameters from 22.2 to 31.8.

I’ll have to see if the brackets play nice with the specially shaped Surly Truck Stop handlebar on the Diverge and the D-Fuse bar on the Giant, but if they don’t, the world has other handlebars to call upon.

Once I’ve sorted the fit, I’ll be able to assemble one tool kit for all five bikes and move the handlebar bag to whichever one I’m taking out on a given day—with plenty of room left over for extra clothes, food, a lock, and/or whatever I pick up on the ride.

The impetus to the purchase was the Garmin Varia radar unit I added to the seatposts of all those bikes.

The radar’s position eliminates the use of seat bags, and the frame bags I’ve been using on the single bikes are a bit tight on space for my purposes.

(Extra third-party mounts make it easy to move the Varia from bike to bike. The saddle-rail attachment I favor works especially well with the Kinect suspension seatpost on the Giant.)

Now all I have to figure out is how to mount the headlight.

My other handlebar bag is the big Arkel, which can be a challenge to use when your shifters are on top of the brake levers.

April 26, 1 mile