8. May 1999. Tomi Engel

The target was to be able to use the GreenAmigo for regular touring and for cruises to the office or some clients, which required reasonable carrying capacity and water and dirt proof storage.

Two big panier allowed me to carry enough load but did not provide useful protection if I would decide to transport my mobil office (Panda and tools). Being mounted on the side does expose their content extremly to the most common crash on a recumbent: the rear wheel slips and you grind to a halt on one side of the bikes frame.

Besides this totally unacceptable damage potential it turned out that carrying around two fully loaded paniers is neither very elegant nor relaxing. Especially when you decide that you might go for a long hike after having toured to a nice place. Usually this is where you finally realize that there are places where mountain bikes (not recumbents) and donkeys are the only alternatives to walking.

8. Take an empty tail sack...	8. add a backpack...
9. plus common extensions...	9. and you are ready to go.

People who spend more time on regular bike tours should get along just fine with regular paniers, because they allow easy access to small chunks of the baggage, but to me the ultimate solution would if I could safely transport my regular hiking backpack.

The Fährmann-Ortlieb Connection

Luckily there are two German companies, which are not only located quite close to my hometown,

8. Velcosystem

9. Carrier support

but that would turn out to be of great help in getting this project done.

Fährmann is manufacturing high quality hiking

The carrier provides the necessary support for heavy load which reduces the stress on the sack (especially the spots where it had to be punctured in order to fix it to the seat). Besides this obviouse function it also serves as an additional protection to the baggage since if the bike would fall over, the solid iron carrier mounts would

The carriers two central beams extend to the rear an serve as a mount point for the rear light (a Busch & Müller LED with ... Standlicht). They could modfied to serve as a fender as well but the Ortlieb sack is dirt and water proof and covers the entire dirt impact zone.

Image 9 does show an early stage of the carrier which lacks the powder coating in RAL ... and two additional alloy beams on the outer end.

The sack ..even fully loaded is stillvery aerodynamic.

8. All packed up...

9. but still aero'.

9. Lockable but not "knife proof"