At the beginning of the month (August) I started looking for a bar bag for my commuting APB Moulton. What had brought this on was that we had just had a short spell of good weather here in Hove on the south coast of England. I found that wearing light trousers meant that my wallet and keys were a problem banging around in my pockets as I cycled. I needed a solution.
On the handlebars of my commuting APB is a Klickfix mount to take my rather excellent Carradice Super-C bar bag. This, of course, is a super piece of touring baggage but far too large to use just for wallet and key. This I use mostly on my touring Moulton R18, but I have the Klickfix mount on the commuting APB because sometimes it has been very useful to use the Super-C bar bag on it. It is great for carrying camera stuff and I used it to take pics at Pride in Brighton this year for example.
So, now I wanted a much smaller bag for the commuting APB to put onto that Klickfix mount. Smaller and also one that could work as a shoulder bag very easily. Although the Carradice Super-C bag has a shoulder strap it is really awful to use as a shoulder bag because of its boxy shape.
I looked at all the UK online stores for a bag but I could not find a suitable one. There were smaller bags but none that would go on the Klickfix mount.
I went to the Klickfix website and saw that they do bags by Rixen-Kaul. It looks to me like Rixen-Kaul and Klickfix are the same company. Anyway, I looked through those Rixen-Kaul bags and saw that they have one that looked like it would suit very well. The Rixen-Kaul Smile. Whilst Smile is a pretty naff name, the bag looked good for my plans.
More pics in gallery
It didn’t seem to be available from any UK dealers, so I had to buy it from a German online retailer. Fortunately I have a good friend Anne who speaks German very well because she is, in fact, German.
In some of the gallery pics there is no shoulder strap. In fact I have shoulder strap on it all the time and I just tuck it into the bag’s handle like to keep it from dangling around whilst riding.
The bag also comes with a waterproof cover which is like a black shower cap.
I’ve had the bag for a couple of weeks now and I’ve been using it always when I go shopping etc. It’s no fashion accessory, this I know
, but it looks “equipmenty” enough such that I get away with it. When worn on the human it looks like it might be a camera bag or something like that.
It takes my wallet and keys no problem. It will also take a few other things, like a compact camera or a pint of milk.
I think it is true that in Germany they make a lot of things for commuting cyclists that are very practical and useful. In the UK we have loads of stuff for leisure cyclists but not as much for commuters.