...is that a purse?

well i sure didn't intend to. it all started a couple of weeks ago when i got tired of trying to find stuff from my pannier. they are really poorly made and have these horizontal pockets on the top of them. i put my cell, wallet, ipod, keys.... and bunch of other important stuff in them. as i was riding home one night i stopped to get out some gloves. i started to open one of the sides, and i noticed that i had forgotten to zip up this stupid horizontal pocket. this could have been very bad if i had lost any one of those things mentioned. luckily everything was still there.

i started looking around for an alternative pack. i don't want to carry around a backpack any more it's just not any fun. in the summer, my back gets so sweaty. i saw my friend had one of those handle bar packs on his bike.... hmmm, that might just be the thing i need.

i was at the sporting goods store and found one for 10 bucks. dang! sometime stuff is so cheap. anyway i brought it home and started filling it with my stuff. it was really cool. everything important had a place, and there was even room for my digital camera. that was nice, because then i could get to it easily and take some ex-cyclist shots. this worked really well.

one day i decided to bring my road bike into work. not a problem, i put my handle bar pack on my road bike, and the rest of the stuff into my backpack [my road bike does not have panniers]. i did this for about a week, and it worked great!

now i can switch between bikes and not forget anything.

one day i didn't even ride my bike in but since all my stuff was in my handle bar bag, i just threw it into my car. i then carried it from my car to my cube.... then at the end of the day i'd carry it from my cube back to the car... then into the house.

a few days later, i had to drive into work again, and proceeded with the same routine. you know what? when you are carrying around a handle bar bag in your hand, instead of the handle bars... it is no longer a handle bar bag..... it's a freakin' purse!

but it's soooo handy! i could even carry a first aid kit... or my jet boil stove.... you name it. i can see why women use purses. i don't know why they carry around so much useless crap. if i carried around a real purse. i'd have my leather man, some flint, one of those emergency blankets, my ipod, gorilla glue, a map, and a camera....oh yeah, and some breath mints and an almond snickers.

today was a really hard day..maybe i'll save it for the next post.