The craziness of defending my thesis, turning it in and having family and friends over to celebrate caused a temporary lag in the updates, but now that the party is over (well as of tomorrow), I’m back to trip preparation. After doing a crash replacement on our 6 year-old Ortlieb classic panniers, the new ones came in the mail super quick! The upside of having to get new panniers (the old ones were tearing on the bottoms) is that we now have orange panniers to match the bike. They got a first test this weekend on the ETC 3rd annual beer ride and then again on Sunday for the ride to the WABL festival. Sunday was a bit slower and we had to make a stop at A-pizza mart to fuel the last 7 miles. ~55 miles Saturday and another 50 or so on Sunday. All and all a good weekend.