Top boxes (+ a little soft Vs hard luggage debate) :-)

[anotherbiker]

So, I think I'm probably going to pick one of the 1000cc+ monstrosities for my future RTW bike (well, RTW a bit at a time), as I can't afford to take too much time off work so will need to travel significant distances quickly at times...

... Having, therefore, ignored all the bloody good advice on these forums that this is madness, and I should be on a 1980s air cooled single cylinder bike, I thought I would make a small concession to sanity and follow all the luggage advice I read on here. So ok, Touratech Zega Pros are out, soft panniers are in!

But I just can't get my head around all the security arguments for soft luggage. Put all the really valuable stuff in a tank bag and take it with you? Absolutely, I do that already when touring. Take everything into the hotel/tent with you at night? Ok, that makes sense... a bit of hassle mind, but, yeah... fair enough.

That's all well and good... but what do I do when on my travels I find an interesting looking tourist attraction or similar, and want to park my bike and explore on foot? Ok, so I have my tank bag with all the super valuable stuff in it with me... but you know what's really expensive? Camping stuff. And that's all just sat on my bike, waiting for someone to undo a strap and run off with it.

I say this as someone who has had an expensive sleeping bag stolen from a soft bag on his bike on a trip while parked up in California.

I know you can use Pacsafe mesh... indeed, I already have some Pacsafe mesh stuff. I'd probably trust it to secure some things that I could stand to lose if I had to on the bike. Would I trust it to secure 100s and 100s of $s of camping stuff? I don't think I would.

So that brings me onto thinking about getting a top box. Maybe the Pelican case based ones. But it'd have to be pretty large to fit all my camping stuff, and as well as looking weird to me, those huge boxes all up in the air way back behind the rear wheel look like a bit of an aerodynamic/weight distribution nightmare.

So this is my dilemma... do I get a top box which is better for security, but worse for everything else? Or do I use a soft bag and accept that I'll be unwillingly donating tents/sleeping bags/etc. to local thieves as I go?

And again... before anyone tells me that theft never happens. It has already happened to me once!!!