Monkey with Chainsaw

Just a quick post here: I purchased a Knog “The Boxer” rackless pannier earlier this year from Cambria Bicycle Outfitter; they had a heck of a deal on them.  I wasn’t so thrilled about the whole rackless thing, but I really wanted a “Dutch Dog”.  The Boxer is pretty much a Dutch Dog with a built-in frame so you can use it even if your bike doesn’t have a rack.  I finally gave this system a test and found its build quality to be excellent, but the execution a little lacking.

In short: it’s a great bag with a simple attachment system that should work on most bikes.  It probably will work well with very light loads, but this is a voluminous bag, so of course I had my laptop, a 9″x13″ glass pan of brownies, a towel, and a three-piece suit (another story) packed in there.  The waggle of the bag makes it pretty unusable at my normal (read: faster commuter, not racerboy, 15 – 18 mph) speed over some of the trails I take to work.  If you were slow cruising, on very smooth ground, you would probably be alright.  I’ll update more after my ride home with an empty pan of brownies.

The good news is that I had previously adapted The Boxer to work on a normally racked bike withe success.  More on that later, but it was an easy adaptation that worked very well for commuting.