Kicked to the grocery store and picked up 18 lbs. (8.16 kilos) of
groceries and distributed them between my two 488 cu. in. (8-liter)
panniers and my 1000 cu. in. (17-liter) handlebar bag. When I got the
loaded footbike moving it felt as stable as a motorcycle, but when I got
home I had to take a slow little S-turn around my parked car in the
driveway and almost lost it! (The same thing happened to me once on a
motorcycle, too. Hang on to those grips!)

The handlebar bag is nice, but it's suspended from the 'bars by one
bracket, and I didn't like the way it sagged under the weight of the
groceries (maybe 8 lbs. or 3-4 kilos worth).

<http://www.jandd.com/detail.asp?PRODUCT_ID=FTOR2>

So I'll be moving to the late touring cyclist Ken Kifer's solution - a
rack "trunk" bag mounted on top of a front rack.

<http://kenkifer.com/bikepages/touring/bags.htm>

There's a Cannondale trunk bag that's almost as big as my handlebar bag,
which is perfect for bringing my food to work for the day. (My office
isn't footbike-close to any restaurants or groceries.)

<http://www.rei.com/product/765600>

And there's still one front rack with a top that I know of:

<http://www.jandd.com/detail.asp?PRODUCT_ID=FREXT>

Of course, reading Kifer's day-by-day accounts of his tours is making me
consider touring on the footbike (in motels, not camping).

<http://kenkifer.com/bikepages/touring/trips.htm>

BTW he rode with a solar panel mounted across his rear panniers that
charged a battery during the day, which he used to power a laptop in
camp at night!

I save these pages as text files and convert them to Palm documents with
open-source Macintosh software and read them on my ancient Palm Pilot.
(I do the same with books from Project Gutenberg -
<http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page>). Very entertaining adventure
lit, along the lines of Joshua Slocum's "Sailing Alone Around the World"
and Thor Heyerdahl's "Kon-Tiki" etc., but a little less extreme. Though
not without danger - Kifer was killed by a drunk driver in 2003.

--
~Pete HUMMERS | <http://www.obxonstage.com>
==
"The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it."
~John Gilmore, Entrepreneur and Civil Libertarian