At least most things, and maybe new twists on old themes. I was at the local used book store the other day. Every now and then I stop in to see if something new has shown up in the areas I like, and ran across Gail Heilman’s bicycle touring book. While skimming through this one I ran into a line of bags from Velocipac I had not seen before.
It seems they had made full triangle frame bags for a while.
This really shows the limitations of the internet as a catalog of all things. Today there are a few companies out there making bags like this for Lightweight MTN Bike touring, and me taking the canvas approach. But when you search the history of the things there is a big jump from the Swiss Army bike bags to the modern jumping right past things like this. Some other interesting bags of the era were made by MountainSmith under a BikeSmith label, and a local Ventura company was making bags under the Kangaroo label. It is near impossible to find good information on either company’s lines.
There were other bags that were quite interesting too, maybe a few good ideas I could incorporate into other bags. Nothing new, just recombining old ideas to suit my needs.
Rob: We have a handlebar bag from Kangaroo. Must be 30 years old; I’ll have to remember to show it to you sometime. The first time I rode from Ventura to Santa Barbara & back was a Kangaroo Bags event, probably in the early 80s.
doug
The first one I saw was at our local farmer’s market on an old Sequoia that I would covet week after week. It had all the features I liked, and seemend really useful, but made out of that horrible nylon pack cloth of the era. Really cool side pockets that looked easy to get in and out of. It blended some of the TA style bag with what would be a “feed bag” by today’s standards attached to each side. I still have some ideas floating around on how to make a bag like that. It took quite a bit of digging to even find out who Kangaroo was, and finding pictures of the product line is not even possible. We live in a new and different era.
Next time we meet I will remid you about the bag!
I rode a couple days of RAGBRAI on a 1989 Schwinn Aluminum made in Greensboro Tennessee with the Chicago badge and a pair of bright green Kangaroos I found on marketplace just days before. It was a vibe.