I suppose I knew it at the time. I'm sure my wife saw it coming. When I bought the Craigslist bike, what I was really doing was buying the little black dress, the foundation upon which I would construct some sort of fantasy bike. It took almost no time for the accessories to cost more than the bike itself. The fenders, rack, new pedals and
Zefal pump were again as much as the original sale price. And if that wasn't enough, the handlebar bag added another bike's worth of investment. Oy, it's always the accessories that kill you, isn't it?
The latest bangles to adorn the
Allegro come in the form of a new set of
panniers. Well, new isn't technically accurate, so let's say newly acquired. I've been using the bike both as a grocery store bike and more recently as a commuter. I have a couple of
wire baskets for groceries, but wanted something a little more enclosed for the back-and-forth to work. I already have my beloved
Acorn Rando Handlebar Bag mounted more or less permanently on the bike's front rack, so I wanted something that would at least complement it aesthetically.
I clicked around the usual sources, but didn't find much that hit my aesthetic/financial sweet spot. Oh sure,
Rivendell's Sackville Toursacks are gorgeous, but they're so nice I don't think I'd want to put my dirty underwear in 'em. And they'd likely be too big for what I want anyway (not to mention they're a bit on the pricey side).
VeloOrange sells what look like nice
canvas panniers by Minnehaha, but the black doesn't appeal to me and I'm kind of a fan of boxier, more structured stuff. Then I ran across a review on
Lovely Bicycle! of some unconventional panniers made from old canvas Swiss military ammunition boxes. Not the
Victorinox/Wenger "Swiss Army" stuff you buy at the mall. Real Swiss military surplus from the 60's, buried for decades in some bunker just waiting for the next world war to break out. Eventually the military has to swap out the old materiel for more modern stuff, (spoiler alert!) if only to keep its contractors in business, and... And they're the ones I went with. They arrived yesterday.
Form follows function in the
1964 Swiss Ammunition Box Pannier by Out Your Backdoor. Made from surplus ammunition/utility bags manufactured for the Swiss military, these panniers have clearly had a life before the bike. They have what
Grant terms,
beausage. The beauty that comes from use. They are definitely small bags - 8.5" tall, 4" deep, 11.25" wide. But I don't need much space - these are not for long distance touring - I just need to get my iPad, lunch and work clothes back and forth. So these should do just fine. And they look absolutely great.
Out Your Back Door buys these bags and rivets hooks to them so they'll hang from a rack along with one of their embossed leather logos. Of course you could
do it all yourself (I did, in fact, drop by my local surplus store to see if I could find anything remotely like this, but they had nothing akin to these lovely Swiss things), but OYB really has the process down and for a price you'd be hard pressed to match, even if you did all the work yourself. Like many folks on the
interweb who have commented on these, I'd prefer that OYB not add
their branding to the bags, but it's tastefully done and I'm sure it'll blend in with the other leather after I apply a little oil.
 |
| Jury rigged pannier retention system |
OYB offers a few additional enhancements such as shoulder straps and blinky light attackments and personalized embossing. I opted for the shoulder straps and blinky attachments. The blinky attachments are on only one side, which means that technically speaking, there is a correct left and right pannier. Both add-ons seem to be executed very professionally and will probably be around long after I have expired. The bungee cords in the retention system are too short to attache anywhere on my
Avenir Pletscher style rack so I've had to jury rig it with a couple of supplemental bungee cords wrapping around my fender support. I'll have to experiment to see if I can find a more elegant solution, but for now it seems to provide enough downward force to keep the rather small clips from bouncing off the rack.
One of the delightful things about this type of re-purposed item is the fact that there is history built right in. Not my history, but someone's history. Each leather buckle on my set has the following embossment:
H. REINECKE
BECKENRIED NW
64
It's a kind of signature or craftman's mark. Too appropriate for such
Schweizer heimatwerk.
Beckenried is a tiny municipality in the Swiss canton of Nidwalden, on
Lake Lucerne, presumably the location of the the company called Herbert Reinecke, Lederwarenfabrik which made the bags (
based on a brief mention of the firm here which suggests that the firm made saddles for Die Militär-Radfahrer-Truppe, the Swiss bicycle corps). It's a small thing, but it's sort of nice that both bags seem to come from the same workshop in the same year. So thanks to the Swiss military for having such lovely bags made. Thanks to them for keeping them around and in such great condition for fifty years. And thanks to
Jeff Potter from Out Your Backdoor for making it easy to put them on my bike.
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