Trip preparation

I did a test run packing everything up for the trip on Monday to make sure everything would work, and that there was enough room for everything. The front panniers appear to be made of a similar material to that of the Tardis; I managed to fit the entire week's worth of clothes, plus my laptop, plus my CDs, plus my miniswitch with wallwart and ethernet cables, plus my toiletries, into the two front panniers. I also weighed the bike stripped, base load and fully loaded to see what the weight was like (click for pictures):

Bike: 32lbs
Bike + bare load: 41lbs
Bike + full load: 75lbs

This isn't the final weight; there's still my backpack with the water and food in it, so I guess the final total will be somewhere between 80 and 85lbs.

The only oddity my testing has thrown up so far is a bit of a design flaw with the handles of the front panniers; they tend to flop into the spokes. I think a couple of bungee cords should do the trick there. Other than that, I think I'm pretty much good to go. I'll probably repack the front panniers with everything inside a garbage bag on each side, in addition to the plastic bags everything is packed in, since there's supposed to be showers on Monday.

I also need to nip into work tomorrow to pick up the PSU for my laptop. Oops.