Well, today was a day of adjusting. I learned how to adjust the gears. I think I now have everything sorted. But I need to ride a few more days to see if there is a problem with the SRAM gearing. It was a bit of a saga. I had done some work to adjust the position of the gear change leaver for the SRAM. An item which is still not fixed. This caused the SRAM to go out of adjustment. Then I had forgotten I had done it. At first I thought the issues were with the Shimano derailleur. So I adjusted it. Eventually I worked out that the problem was with the SRAM, but now both sets of gears were out of adjustment. So after some experimentation I got the SRAM and the Shimano working within reason. Then last night I remembered that I had adjusted the twist changer for the SRAM. After some experiments this morning I sorted that out. I then printed out the Shimano adjustment manual, and in the afternoon finished adjusting that. I did some of the adjusting on the way home. So I had my new Arkel panniers open. I must not have zipped them up right. (or perhaps a pedestrian at the lights unzipped them. A pedestrian came deliberately in front of me at the lights which at the time I thought was unusual and I could hear another behind.). As I came around into the lane behind my house the zip opened and spilled the contents onto the road. A pedestrian I had just past noticed and called out in alarm. He helped me pick up the contents. I will zip up the panniers differently in the future. Luckily it happened in the back lane and not on the main road where there were cars. Anyway I did not loose anything and nothing seems to be damaged.
I have to say that the Arkel Panners are quite big. (I purchased the RT 40 which hold 40 liters.) One pannier holds more than my two ortlieb panniers. So I am using them for the ride to work and the ortlieb for weekend rides. The pockets are funny shapes and I struggle with the locking mechanism to lock them onto the rack. Maybe I will get used to it. But they are sturdy.
I’d suspect the pedestrian who stepped in front of you was the diversion. Maybe they didn’t get time to get to where you store the gold ingots in the bottom of the pannier. Where did it happen?
(at uni we get all sorts of crime advisories from the police)
I think you are probably right. It was on the corner of Sydenham and Victoria Road.
I have made some changes to the way I use the pannier. It turns out to be relatively easy to prevent two things.
1) I can now make it so people cannot just walk up and lift the pannier off the rack using the relase handle on the rack lock by hiding the release handle.
2) I can clip the zips on the pannier so you have to unclip them before unzipping it.
I remember when backpacking around Europe a few years ago with laptop and camera in the day pack, I would always pull the zips all the way round to one edge and thread one loop through the other so that the plastic ends would slow a potential thief down.
Make it harder to lift the panners off is a good idea.