Baggers

© Ken Bingenheimer / RumBum.com

This luggage thing on motorcycles just grows and grows. When John and Bill and I started taking our summer OFMC bike trips, like this one we’re on right now, we used to strap things on our small bikes with bungee straps. Even now, none of the three of us have baggers but there are quite a few baggers on this trip.

Baggers, in case you are unfamiliar with the term, are the big touring motorcycles that come with hard luggage bags. They generally have a full fairing, two side bags, and often also have one big trunk bag sitting above the rear tire. These are traveling bikes.

Watching Brett, Jason, and Dennis on their baggers has been eye-opening, and at least in John’s case, drool-inducing.

You have to understand, for all these years we have loaded all our stuff on our bikes, reached our destination for the day, and unloaded it all and carried it up to our rooms. Usually this has entailed multiple trips lugging heavy stuff up and down stairs.

Not the guys on baggers. Helmet? Just stick it in the big rear trunk. Leathers? They live in one of the side bags. Rain suit? Side bags, too. No need to carry any of that stuff. Just leave them all in the bags and lock the bags.

Well, OK, but what about the stuff you need to take into the motel room? You know, clothes and that sort of stuff.

Simple. Brett has it all figured out. He straps a specially designed suitcase on top of the rear trunk bag. You know, wheels and extending handle, just like what you roll into the airport and stick in the overhead compartment. All the stuff he needs is in there and it’s just as if he got out of a car.

There are drawbacks to having all this stuff. This is Brett’s first year with this new bike. He sold his old Harley to his brother, Matt, who is along on this trip for the first time. And Matt’s bike, which always looked big to me, now looks petite next to Brett’s new bagger. John asked Brett how the two compare and Brett did acknowledge that he kind of misses the old bike because it was so much lighter.

Well, yes. With the rear trunk bag and a suitcase on top of that, he’s not only got weight, he has made that bike really top heavy. And while Jason doesn’t have a wheeled suitcase on top of his rear trunk bag, he does have a large bag he straps on there, too. Height and weight.

John wants it. His imagination has been sparked with the idea of not carrying all that stuff in and out every day. And you know, his Shadow is 16 years old. It’s time for a new bike, isn’t it? How inconvenient that it still runs great. So, I’m predicting that on next year’s trip there will be one more bagger, and one less Shadow making the run. Unless there are two new baggers. Bill’s been turning a little green looking at these things, too.