HI Ted

I would have to disagree. As a source for information in English on bike travel there's no site better, IMHO. On every forum there are the travel-newbies, bullsh*tters and Touratwat types who think bling is alli king. It's not hard at all to suss out if they have been around and about in the world and what luggage they used.

IMHO Alli boxes are more dangerous for your legs/ankles. Despite this, if you go to a German bike travellers meet (our teutonic friends have been going RTW while we were in nappies and there's a lot more of them) like the Tesch Treffen or Gieboldehausen, most bikes, especially the travel scarred ones, have (scarred) alli boxes. Lots of Germans like it hard.

FWIW, for proper off-road I ride a 400cc single with soft and light luggage, for touring I've got an A/T with alli boxes. If I only had 1 travel bike, it'd be a 600 or 650cc single with soft bags.

Soft luggage technology has moved on a lot. It's now very sturdy and waterproof. In the past It may not have been.

I agree 100%. Also for onroad/easy gravel. Also for commuting. A couple of years ago a car tosser shunted me from the side. My Transalp became an accessory on his front bumper. The left footpeg and rack were attached to his car. My MX boot saved my left ankle from much worse damage.


Hang loose
Chris

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TBS.com

I meant that it's hard to know what to do.. So many contrasting opinions ! For a newbie, its a mine field....

An experienced traveller/rider like yourself can smell the "doo doo" . When i started out, I was sucked into people telling me this and that and it was mostly just a waste of money and "bling".

I guess It always goes back to "whatever works for you" ! I suppose all one can do is learn through personal experience.


I actually have the same "fleet as you". DRZ400S for trail/offroad trips and an Africa twin with hard givi luggage !!

And yeah.. If I could have ONE bike it would probably be a DR650 or TTR600RE with soft bags

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Did some trips.
Rode some bikes.
Fix them for a living.
Can't say anymore.

I won't repeat my experiance and changed view. They are earlier in this thread, and elsewhere.

Another thought for a newbie - why not try the cheaper sytem first (£100 or so). Then, if not happy with them, write a cheque for 10 to 15 times as much.
Far cheaper than learning the other way round, which most (including me) seem intent on doing.

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I never meant his thread to be for or against any type of luggage, as this type of discussion leads nowhere.
I wanted experience good or bad with both types and arguments for and against, so I can make my own decision according to my own needs and I think I am getting that ( with a few detours )

I started this thread after reading a travel report where a guy caught his foot on a roadside rock and the hardcase broke his ankle.

One of my highest priorities, as I travel mostly alone, is selfsustainability, which to me means a light machine and light and easily removable luggage.

A horror scenario for me, would be to lie under a heavily loaded BMW in the middle of Mongolia , having to wait for someone to free me (sounds familiar?)

I am also contemplating ways of rounding/protecting edges of the case and maybe have release mechanism á la a ski release, maybe adjustable.

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Poul
May you enjoy peace and good health !

I think it's important to keep things in perspective .

[From their Blogs or diaries ]

Tedmagnum smashed his panniers to pieces riding fast on a gravel road that suddenly turned to sand .Using road biased tyres .

Ted Simon broke his leg against a pannier ,in a fall whilst riding a muddy road also on road biased tyres .

You could therefore conclude that the tyres were also to blame.
Or perhaps people called Ted are predisposed to aluminium pannier accidents .

Hard panniers aren't the only part of a bike that can cause injury ,motorcycling is a risky business at the best of times .
I've had my leg trapped under a bike that had no panniers ,big deal !

There are cheap strong aluminum panniers that cost about the same as a set of premium quality soft bags ,so you don't have to spend a fortune on either kind .

Tedmagnum summed it up very well , wear strong boots !

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Blessed are the cracked, for they let in the light. - Spike Milligan
"When you come to a fork in the road ,take it ! When you come to a spoon in the road ,take that also ."

That was just one of the occassions. I crashed using Karoo's too !

Although, my rediculously overloaded, unbalanced bike didnt help with the handling.

I'm not saying that the boxes made me crash, although I do think the weight of the boxes certainly contribute to handling problems. The handling of my bike improved dramatically after ditching the weight (ie the boxes)

To get back to to the point of the thread. Yes, I was stuck under my bike by my box which was only protected by my massive boots. I had to wiggle my way free with difficulty. If it wasnt for my Tech 10 boots, my ankle and shin were sure to be badly injured. I don't think I could of wiggled free with a broken ankle.

Just to stir the pot, I know a Canadian guy who got wedged between a truck and a cliff my his metal boxes. Whilse overtaking, the truck moved in a little and he got stuck between them.

He said he would of made it if his bike was 1" slimmer lol. Also, his ankles were crushed as the box's folded in on him like a mousetrap.

He was wearing walking boots and enjoyed 2 months in a Colombian hospital as a result. He now wears big MX boots and has a slimmer, box free bike !

__________________
Did some trips.
Rode some bikes.
Fix them for a living.
Can't say anymore.

He wasn't called Ted by any chance ?

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Blessed are the cracked, for they let in the light. - Spike Milligan
"When you come to a fork in the road ,take it ! When you come to a spoon in the road ,take that also ."

It's all very well to say such things 'hard panniers broke my leg', however, when you consider the machinery they are covering (that spinning cheese-grater and amputation chain) then, being hurt by a box is going to be a better outcome than getting your leg/arm/head (I don't know have you seen how some folk crash!) stuck in the moving parts - isn't it ?

It's a balance of risk, correctly loaded, a metal pannier is not going to burst open in most cases, but the flipside is it has to be packed very firmly and therefore it can become heavy. On the other side soft luggage can be a complete liability if it is not packed correctly. It is, or can be lighter if you are riding certain terrain.

It all comes down to your own ability, assesment of the risks and where you are going.

Personally, I would preffer to come off a bike 10 time a day and be able to crawl from under it, that get pinned once. You can always rest if you wave the choice.

Then again you could argue that with soft luggage you are predisposed to have less accidents and therfore less likely to hurt yourself.

The point I'm tring to make it there are many factors that would cause you to choose your luggage - not least you ability to ride the bike and the level of safety equipment you wear.

I can't understand why this is such an emotive issue, in the end, just like your choice of bike, luggage is a choice of what best suits an individual

This thread reads to me like 'I take soft becasue it allows me to controll my weight', where 'hard luggage is more spacious and as we all know we expand to fill all available space' So it's not a case of hard v's soft, it's a case of heavy v's light.....

And I met a New Yorker and a Frenchman at the Ecuador border, one of whom (I've forgotten which) got trapped precisely that way between a truck and a concrete guardrail in S.A. Guess what took the impact and scraping?

You know the quote about the plural of "anecdote" not being "data?" For every personal experience stated here, someone else can match an opposing experience. For every thirdhand anecdote, a matched contradictory anecdote. That doesn't make one or the other the "correct" answer; it just means there are a lot of data points to consider.

Someone nameless with whom I rode for a while in S.A. has written about the various advantages of riding fast across the tops of corrugations on ripio roads. However, he crashed a time or two when he hit gravel berms or sand unexpectedly. His conclusion was that the roads are terrible and difficult; I ride slowly on corrugations and conclude that I'm not very adventurous or skillful...but I don't fall, and I don't get my leg crushed by panniers either. So far. And my bike is way overloaded, with over 60kg of baggage in addition to my no-longer-exactly-sleek self.

I'll be sure and post if and when my personal set of anecdotal evidence changes drastically, possibly from a hospital somewhere while they assemble and pin my tibia and fibula.

Safe journeys and wise choices!

Mark

(time to leave Puerto Natales, I think, and confront the winds, cold, damp and ripio once again)

Sounds to me like more judgement would have helped him rather than fewer inches!!

Don't mess with 40 tons of steel!

OK, then.
Based on that I shall refine my previous response:

I have ridden Europe but also South America, on and off-road. Off-road may have been easy for an experienced off-roader but for me, a novice, 2-up on a BM 1150 GS, it was not.

We fell off, never fast, and the panniers never damaged neither myself nor my girlfriend (and I would say she was at greater risk).

The only injury I suffered was a rider's footpeg in the calf muscle (No puncture wound, just heavy bruising). I had touring boots on. MX boots would have protected me, hence a pair of Alpinestarts Tech 3s are now in the wardrobe. They have since protected me when a nice fiesta drive slammed my GS (RIP) and I into a crash barrier...

It easy to say that "my hard luggage hurt me" because one is there when it happens: very little room for misintrepretation.

What is harder to say, but equally valid is, "would harder luggage have protected me?" I am sure there are plenty of riders who have had a limb bruised, cut or worse by a bike landing on them.

I am sure that in some cases the added clearance of hard luggage would have avoided that. Saying which cases is a lot harder, and so the bias will be against hard luggage either way.

Best protection with soft or hard, as already mooted is wear beefy boots.

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Adventure: it's an experience, not a style!
(so ride what you like, but ride it somewhere new!)