the idle mind...

 Oh, my stars, but when it hasn't been too cold for me to ride recently (a number of the Hill Slugs have apparently done a trail ride), it's been too wet. I've been sitting home idle, trying to avoid being completely overwhelmed by self pity. 

I got to thinking about the organizer bags I use in my seatbag to manage my CO₂ cartridges, multi-tool, and the like. I got about a dozen or so at a dollar store than has since gone belly-up, and I haven't seen the like elsewhere to replace them. They're zipper bags, about 5x7", with a layer of plastic on the fabric so they're at least nominally water-resistant... but the fabric is thin and wears out, and the zipper gives up at the slightest sign of overfill.

I've got this fabric that I used to make saddle covers (the plastic I got initially proved to be too thin, so I got some polyester canvas with a rubber coating). I got way too much, thinking that I'd need to make several saddle covers until I found a design that worked... and then I hit on an effective design on the first try. I've got two saddle covers, so if The Excellent Wife (TEW) and have both bikes on the car, we can protect both saddles (only mine is leather, but there you are).

I had to get a zipper for another project, and got a couple of blue-jeans zippers to play with for this (although I'd use heavy plastic zippers in future; the brass resists zipping on these bags). At first, I thought of a rectangular bag (bottom left, above)... but I got the corners wrong, and it turned out not to fit neatly in the seatbag I use (at top, above, the Topeak Large Aero Wedge; it's the biggest underseat bag I can find that doesn't require a separate frame and doesn't seem TOO stupid). The bag fits, of course... but it makes it hard to also fit in the two tubes and the VAR tire tools I like to carry.

Then I got the idea of making a bag that was the shape of the seatbag. I tried tracing the bottom, but that turned out to have too much "pinch" at the narrow end. Then I traced the side, and that worked better; you can see the bag at center bottom, above (bottom right is the pattern I traced). I can push it in to one side of the bag, and get the two tubes next to it.

It fits two CO₂ cartridges, my "detonator", my Crank Brothers M-19 multi-tool, and my Lezyne aluminum tire levers. It doesn't fit the pill bottle full of a dozen-or-so quicklinks in 9- and 10-speed sizes (I know from experience that I can use a 10-speed link on an 11-speed chain), but that can sit in the narrow nose of the seatbag*. I figured the angled zipper on the side would give me easier access than a zipper on the end (and I was right). My two tubes, the VAR tools, a set of Allen wrenches, and some tire boots also fit in the seatbag (though not in the organizer).

*I have had to use these exactly twice in my decades of riding, but I make it a point of pride to have with me what I need to get you going again. There's probably not enough therapy in the world to fix me.

I need to think of another project; it doesn't look like the weather is improving soon.