Re: Chaep, good water carrying back pack .UK
Joe Marshall <news@joemarshall.org.uk> wrote:
> I rode with something similar last year, a little rucsac from lidl with a
> hose hole and a cheap water bladder.
Not so similar then. Balcks do make decent packs, the materials and
manufacture of this one all seem to be of a high standard.
> I think if you don’t need to ride with water too often, they’re okay, but
> there I had some problems with this kind of solution. Firstly the bag wasn’t
> so nice, Camelbaks are very well made and are one of the few bags I’ve tried
> where the straps actually make it comfy for cycling and don’t let it wobble
> around much if you tighten them up.
The Blacks bag does seem to have designed for cycling. The mesh back is at
least as good as the karrimor version. The main straps are wide, but light
being again largely mesh, the hip belt works, and it and the chest strap
are not restricting. The pocket desing keeps the bladder in place next to
the bag while allowing lots of other stuff to go in the main section as
wee, then there are two further zipped pockets in the Lid holding
flap. There is also a conceled rain cover pocket with attached waterproof
cover (yellow, handy for seeing Paul on the ski slopes in bad visibily)
My cheap one didn’t have a proper bite
> valve on the bladder hose, it had a lid you had to take off to drink, rather
> than just a thing you bite, the camelbak bite valve is a really big part of
> what makes them good. The other thing I found with my cheaper bladder was
> that it started leaking after a couple of months of riding, which made all
> the stuff in my bag wet and made me run out of water.
Now your talking about a cheap bladder, I was talking about Platypus. I’ve
carted two platy baldders around for the last two years, including two
ski trips, two Red bull races, and many days shoved in my day sack, with
no leaks except the time Paul sat on one on a ski lift and bent the
lid. If I wanted I could buy a replacement lid, a nice thing about Platys
being that you can buy all the bits seperatly and what fits one size
bladder fits other sized ones too ( OK, except the wide opener one which
has the hose built in). The bite valve is a proper bite valve , looks a
lot like a CB one and works the same way.
> You can of course upgrade a platypus based system by adding a camelbak
> bladder, which would remove many of my complaints about cheaper camelbak
> things, but they cost about 30ukp, which would bring the total cost to
> probably as much as a camelbak.
If you use a Platypus system , as oppossed to a cheap bladder, you won’t
need to upgrade unless you chose to buy a bigger/smaller one at some later
point. I’ve never had a taste issue with them. They really are every bit
as good as Camelbac, just made by a different company and sold under
their own name at a fraction of the cost of the trendy brand
Camelbac. For example a 2.4 litre Platy bladder and hose comes to about
16 ukp rather than CBs 30 ukp.
There are other bladders out there, and yes some are lousey, but
not Platypus.
> I didn’t know blacks gave YHA people discounts, I’ll have to remember that.
Seee you learn something every day, I read the YHA guide discounts section
the other day.
Sarah
Eurocycle 2002, Bremen, May 31st-June 2nd
The European Unicycle Event of the year.
http://www.eurocycle.org