But the rest of the stuff you carry can be managed, and ought to be managed well. Here are a few things to consider.

• Making up load itself
• Loading with respect to the bike and how it handles
• Loading with respect to weather
• Tying down the load.
• And finally, trailers
(No link; not written yet, but I'll tell you now, they are a terrible idea.)

First of all, you have a fairly limited amount of space and load capacity, so try to think like a backpacker. Don't carry anything unless you know you're going to need it. Don't carry something heavy if you can get something light to replace it. Don't carry something bulky if you can get something compact. Don't carry something if you can pick up and dispose of something else that will do the job along the way (the best example of this is hammers; I know guys who carry hammers to pound tent pegs. I have to wonder what they think God made rocks for.) When you can, carry money instead of stuff. Money is lightweight, small, and can be turned into anything that man ever made except love. And it'll even get you a reasonable simulation of that if you have enough of it.

So first gather up all the stuff you want to take, from socks to screw drivers to sleeping bags. Put it all in a big heap out in the yard or in the garage. Don't try to sort it out yet, just look at it for now. Impressive heap, ain't it?

Go get a cup of coffee or a beer and watch a football game, or fool around with the ole lady or something for an hour or two. Come back and look at it again. Gather up and throw on the heap all the things you remembered you needed while you were watching the game.

And NOW you are ready to start the real job, that of selecting the stuff you need.

OK, you've moved the "gotta have" stuff over into one pile. Throw your ole lady's "gotta have" stuff on there too. That'll take a while, 'cause a woman has a waaaay different view of "gotta have" than a man does, and you're gonna have a long discussion, maybe several discussions, with her about what goes on that heap.

Now let's say the "gotta have" heap is complete. Look at it again and make sure that there is absolutely nothing there that is not essential.

Once you've got it sorted out you pack it. This is just a preliminary packing to see where the essential items fit. The best way to pack stuff is in bags, of course, even the things that are going in saddlebags if you have 'em. Those nylon duffle bags that you can find everywhere do a pretty good job at this stage. Tools need to go into a leather pouch or one made of heavy-duty canvas. If you only carry a few, and you get the right type of roll for them, you may be able to strap it on somewhere down low and forward, like on the frame downtubes behind the front wheel.

A Bad Example

I'll be referring back to this photo as we go along, so if you click the image, a larger version will show up in a separate window for your examination. For now, let's just look at where he has placed his stuff.

To start with, you've got to understand that the bike is a lever, with its weight (including you and your gear) being the load the lever works on, and your inputs as rider (including throttle and brakes) being the force to move that weight. What you must do is set the lever up so that the weight has the least mechanical advantage working against you.

Let's take a pole as tall as you are, stand it on end, and put a 100 pound weight on the very top of it. Now you stand there and hold the pole right in the middle. As long as it's perfectly balanced and standing still, no problem. But how well will you be able to control the weight once it moves off-center? It'll be pretty hard, huh? And the farther off center it goes, the harder it will be and the slower you'll be able to bring it back up.

So what we have here in this photo is a bike that, when leaned over, will be difficult and slow to bring back upright. When it accelerates, it will want to lift the front wheel off the ground. While it may not actually come up (but there's good chance on this example that it will) , it will get light and lose some of its "bite" on the road.

What it will also do is try to make the bike "twist" around the rear contact patch, like a lever. Remember how a lever works when the fulcrum is not at the center? A small movement on the short end results in a larger, but weaker, movement on the long end? Well, that's what happens here.

Now you might think that the bike can't pivot like that because the front contact patch will resist it. Partly true, BUT - there is a hinge (the steering neck) between the front and rear contact patches. That "hinge" will be deflected somewhat, which amounts to a steering input as it twists the front end, so you'll get a twitch in the steering.

It works the other direction too, but it is a little harder to visualize.

To make it easy to imagine, suppose that for some reason the rider gives one end of the handlebar a sharp rap. That will put a deflection into the "hinge" that will be passed back through the chassis to the load, pivoting a bit around the rear contact patch. The load will move slightly out of line, then snap back. As it comes back, it feeds in an input through the chassis just as though it had been hit with a wind gust, which makes the steering twist again. Under the wrong combination of circumstances, that process can become self-feeding, and turn into a speed wobble.

But as long as the inputs are not too strong and the load not too heavy, and the steering head is well-maintained, it will resist those impluses and not be a problem.

None of these motions works independently, of course; each feeds its inputs into the other. And when they all add up the wrong way, the motorcycle winds up riding you down the road.

Stuff on the Front End
OK, Bronson looked cool with his bedroll lashed to the front end, and Fernando Lamas does it on Renegade and it looks great, right? Well, yeah. But. . .

Depending on what you put there, and where you put it, it can be a real bad deal. I don't do it, and I don't recommend it if there's any way out of it. Having stuff on the front end can affect your suspension and your steering.

You've also got the potential problem of the load on the fender jamming up between the fender as it rises, and the triple clamp. In that case, you just lost the effect of your springs, and the load becomes the spring. If it happens to you I hope at least that the load is a sleeping bag, and it has some "give" to it.

So if you just GOTTA tie something to the front end, keep it above the sliders; you want it to be "sprung" weight.

So that just leaves us the handlebars, right? Or on top of the headlight, which is pretty much the same thing. That's not actually such a bad deal, as long as the load is light weight. Otherwise, you still wind up with that inertia problem: give the handlebars a twist and they'll want to keep moving, or won't want to move quickly. With a light weight it's not really an issue though.

That doesn't mean it's not without problems. You've still got something up there that can come loose and get tangled up between the handlebars and the bike, or you. And it can also feed wind gust unputs into the steering, but Harley's big fairing does that too, so no big deal. If you are careful about tying it on, well, you'll probably be all right, but I don't recommend it.

• Use good-quality bungee cords and nylon straps with positive buckles. Avoid ropes, but if you gotta use 'em, use nylon. It has some spring to it that will allow it to handle surges that hit the load, then spring back. I like the 3/16ths woven stuff. And learn a few knots that really hold well, but release easily when you want them to.
• If you use straps with cam-lock buckles, have a long enough end on the strap to allow it to be wrapped back around the buckle and secured so that the buckle won't pop open.
• Secure your load to frame or solid points on the bike such as rings on the saddlebags. Keep in mind that the ring is no better a lashing point than whatever attaches it to the saddlebag. A big, hefty ring held by a thick leather tab attached to the bag by a single skimpy rivet is not much good.
• Do not secure one piece of the load to another one, or hook one bungie cord or strap to another up on the load. For example, don't secure your tent to the luggage rack, then tie your sleeping bag to the tent. Every cord or strap should hook to a solid point on the bike, or on something that is firmly attached to the bike.
  TIP: You've probably seen straps like this that are usually used to tie a bike to a trailer. You can also loop them around your frame or rack rails and hook bungie cords to them.
• Critical items should have two tiedowns, each independent of the other.
• Do not wrap bungee cords around tight bends; it can chafe and break them.
• Loads should be supported by the structure of the bike and secured to it by the cords or straps. Don't make the straps or cords fight gravity themselves; that's the job of something solid.

Look at the point indicated by the left center arrow. The guy has used grass rope to secure his load, which is a bad idea. Not terminally stupid, but not very good, either. Try not to use rope at all except maybe to lash things together, like two bags that will be secured together to the bike by something else. Better yet, save rope for use in camp and use straps with positive buckles, or bungee cords to secure the load.

Note just below that same arrow how he has just looped the rope around a fairly sharp edge where the round pipe of the rack is stamped flat. That is a natural stress point for the rope, and while that edge may not be sharp enough to cut it, it can sure-enough chafe it in half over time.

Which leads to the next point. Look at the top arrows; they point to a snap connector and a bungee net hook attached to the rope.

Now on the one hand, that's sort of a good thing. The bungee net has some spring to it, so if the rope develops slack in that area the bungee will take it up.

Those two hookups are a very bad idea though. If the rope breaks the loose end will slip out of those two hookups, leaving them loose. It also looks like if one part of the rope breaks, the whole damn thing will be loose. If you are going to use a rope, tie it off every time you reach a hard point, don't just loop it around.

Now look at the bottom arrow. It points to a spot where his luggage rack bracket has broken before. Despite that demonstration of weakness, he has tied everything he has to that bracket or the box it supports. Bad move, 'cause I'd bet that it's gonna break again. You can see that it's already bent from the stress.

He's got a couple good bungee cords, but they appear to be going to waste stretched between the luggage rack and the bar across the back of the box.

Overall, this load is a disaster looking for a place and time to happen.

From a convenience standpoint, he has a hard time taking just one thing off. It's all too tied up together to make it easy.

Worst case for him though, would be if that luggage rack strut breaks. The other side probably won't break off too, it will bend and leave him trying to handle a bike with all that junk hanging off the right side in a tangle of steel and rope. No thanks, not me.

Or maybe lucky for him it would break off clean and fall away behind. Heaven help the folks following him, especially if they are on bikes. And oncoming traffic if a following car bunts the junk off into their lane.