> beware the girth .

gooood point

but I'd still go for safety first

I'm rarely in a rush to get anyplace

when on a bike I'm zoned out .. I'm in the groove ..

Zoned out? Are you American?


Hard boxes don't mean safety. Sure, sometimes when you fall, they may protect you ... BUT ... as often as not, a leg or foot gets caught under a box. Not a pretty picture. Many many riders have broke legs and ankles this way.

What you haven't brought up is the bike your riding and the sort of riding you intend. There is now a STRONG consensus that if you're doing a lot of riding OFF ROAD on smaller, lighter bike then soft panniers are The Way.

If you never intend to explore off road ... or very rarely ... then Hard Boxes are just fine. They give the illusion of security and ARE convenient in some ways.

Hard bag users tend to Over load their bikes ... as hard boxes allow that. Also, consider the added weight that Ted brought up. Not only the weight of the empty boxes, but the weight of racks and all the hardware. It's substantial.

On a R1200GS, not a big deal. On a 400cc to 650cc bike, more of an issue.
Off road too much weight is a disaster waiting to happen.

In your first post you asked about detachable boxes. They ALL detach. You thought it would be convenient for carrying into your room. Yes, it is.
But do what the Pros do ... use bag liners, fit them in your boxes. All contents goes into liners.

When you arrive, simply open box, grab liner straps and walk away. After a long, hard day, this is a MUCH better way.
Boxes are heavy and sometimes a PITA to detach/reattach. Leave empty boxes on bike. In the AM simply slip liner bags back into boxes. Done, ready to ride.

I wouldn't have considered this a major issue - until it happened to me A low speed fall in sand without enough momentum to carry me clear of the bike. Only bruises and strained ligaments fortunately but that was more down to wearing MX boots than anything.


It's not much of a contrary arguement but I've had a "few" occasions where soft luggage has come off and I've lost it. If a hard box falls off you're likely to notice; I certainly did when one box came off and went under a following car last year

Soft luggage does seem to have come into its own in recent years with an increasing selection of professionally manufactured bike specific stuff to choose from so maybe the days of lash-ups from army surplus or hiking rucksacks etc discarding your belongings as you go are over. I spent years trying to live down a reputation for dragging soft bags behind me on the road as everything but one last (long) strap came undone or broke.

Am I imagining things or have hard luggage system been getting bigger (and wider and heavier) as the years have passed? I've always been conscious of the width of luggage on whatever bike I've loaded up and in particular whether it's wider than the handlebars. Wider than the handlebars (or even close to it) is a huge no no for me as it's very easy to find yourself leaving scrape marks when overtaking in traffic. Metal boxes leave bigger marks than soft luggage

Well, yes, I suppose they do if you're happy to sit there in the rain with a socket wrench for ten minutes every morning and evening but my definition of detachable is being able to take them off / put them on in about 10secs each without tools.

The "Pro's" quote above made me smile. I read somewhere recently that there are only about 500 people making a full time living from novel writing in the US. I wonder how many are doing the same from overlanding? Any guesses? Journalists, book writers, people running courses on the back of having done an RTW or where the journey is a means to another end don't count. I doubt if many of the "usual suspects" here are not subsidising their travel by other means. Or maybe you are all funding lavish lifestyles from bike riding and I'm the one left looking forlornly through the railings as you vanish into the distance yet again :confused1:

Back on planet Earth, bag liners are something I've never got on with. I've tried various versions of them over the years but it never seems to work for me. If I use one big bag I can't get the thing back into the box next morning without having to rebuild the contents into the box from scratch. It never just drops back in. If I use a number of smaller bags carrying them into a hotel needs something like a laundry basket to put them all in. It looks like amateur night carrying armfuls of plastic bags into a hotel when everyone else is arriving with holdalls and suitcases. Somewhere there's a "pro" method of doing this but taking a couple of bags of dirty washing past the receptionist isn't it.

Yep, happened to me as well. Painful but nothing broken. Also, "Paddling" in deep sand is a "No No" with hard bags back there! OUCH!

That's funny! I've seen both hard and soft come off the bikes. I've had a few fall off too!

But with me, FIRE was the more serious issue! If softbags are not well set off from hot pipe ... watch out! Various friends have set fire to soft bags as well.

But on the flip side, the hard bag crew constantly have racks cracked and broken. Very common.

Well mounted soft bags with proper off sets are much better today. (as you've noted) The new cinch systems are pretty robust and waterproofness is better too. But still, hard bags are nicer to get into. Soft bags you have to dig around a bit for stuff. Compromises!

Most modern hard bags are 10 second on or off. Not a problem. My various GIVI bags and current Triumph OEM bags ... all good, easy ON/OFF ... just not great for me off road.

By Pro I really mean very experienced riders. Guys at the big BMW rallies is where I learned about bag liners. These guys ride a lot, have learned quite a bit on the road and really are "Pros" regards bike travel. Many work in BMW dealers or are mechanics ... somehow they have time to ride huge miles per year.

Some of the guys I ride with here in San Fran Bay area are on that level too. We call them professionals too ... even though few actually make a living from it. We've got Doctors, Writers, I.T. Wizards, Lawyers, Police, Nuclear scientists and Real Estate and Start Up investors. ALL are great riders, most are as good off road as on and own several bikes. 60 riders in all, but only about 30 active these days.

The best Bag liners are custom made for the hard bag in question. You can improvise but then you can run into the problems you describe. Custom fit bag liners work well, slip right in, no fiddling.
I hate carrying Hard Bags around, especially if your room is 3 flights up.

The "Pro's" bit was very much meant tongue in cheek and I had a good idea what you meant, it was just your shorthand way of using it that amused me. "Stuff the pro's use" is such a hackneyed marketing slogan in my "professional" world (I'm a photographer), trotted out again and again by companies to try and give a serious edge to some piece of kit that children would discard. It was only after I posted that the other interpretation - kit that (moneyed) members of the professional classes would use (I won't put the other half of that in - don't want to upset anybody ) occurred to me.

Maybe I fell on my head as a child or something but for some reason or another "turnkey" luggage systems (hard or soft) always seem to make me turn the other way. It's as though I have to take the road less travelled with bike prep as well as on the map. Bespoke luggage systems have come and gone over the decades and I've very rarely bought any of them. Bikes, yes, tents / camping gear, yes, boots, jackets, yes, but luggage, no. I have made or adapted so many sets of luggage from scratch that I have trouble remembering them. And I mean starting with steel pipes and a welding torch. Doing my own thing with luggage is probably why I've scattered so many of my belongings over the highways and byways of Europe and beyond.

Anyway, my next "expedition", in the planning stage at present, involves taking my wife as a pillion. It'll be her first serious bike trip in quarter of a century and being a "professional person" I'm sure she's not going to put up with any slapdash Poundland based luggage solution. Only the best Honda can offer for her (or at the very least better than what's on the bike her sister and other half use. Nothing like sibling rivalry to loosen the purse strings!). It'll be an interesting experience to ride a bike with luggage that fits.

Uh Oh, the missus on first Bike ride? Maybe something like this?


Or ... if she really gets her way then it'll be this ....

Notice the plate? Oh, the shame! I thought only we 'mericans went of holiday with that set up?

GIVI plastic boxes are so often ignored.

I've used them loads of times on numerous bikes. They're solid, waterproof, probably more secure than aluminium (harder to prise open) and they crash way better than a lot of metal boxes I've used as they just tend to squish.

I'd use them over those big silly metal square cases any day.




However, they don't look 'Adventure' do they ...

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

Yes, that's it exactly - or the front half of it anyway Looks nice in red

It's not her first long trip, just her first since the kids were born. I dug out a few old pics of us riding my old Honda CX Turbo through a snowstorm in the Pyrenees many years ago as well as one of us touring a Honda C50 stepthrough in Greece a couple of years earlier to show what a hard bitten biker chick she is (was) but Photofvcket seems to lived up to its name and now doesn't work at all after I uploaded them.

Plan is to live the American dream and go NY-LA (for her) and back (for me as well) via anywhere interesting that catches our eye. We're probably going to buy one on the east coast - I have a friend in NJ who I'm hoping will be able to source something locally + sort the paperwork and, all other things being equal, will be coming with us on his 1976 GoldWing (or his modern Triumph). We'll then sell it once it's back in NJ. We thought about Harley's (too cliched), BMW (too "professional" ) and anything else just looks like hard work.

You don't happen to know whether the boxes on the 1800Wing come off or is it going to be a case of carrying our dirty washing into hotels in bags?