A few weeks ago I posted a thread on reddit asking what bag people actually use for commuting. Backpack vs tail bag. I wanted to know what riders had landed on.
The responses were exactly what I expected. Backpacks that cook your back in summer. Tail bags you have to hand-carry through the office. Topcases that work great and look terrible. And a surprising number of people committing to bungee-cording a regular backpack to the seat every morning.
Nobody had a clean answer. Not really.
I've been commuting by motorcycle in New York City long enough to have tried most of these myself. The problem I kept running into wasn't just function. It was that nothing I could find worked well on the bike and looked good off it. Those two things don't seem like they should be hard to combine. But apparently nobody has done it in a way that I'd actually want to carry into a coffee shop or a meeting.
So I started building one myself.
What I'm making
The concept is a convertible bag. EDC backpack when you're off the bike, tail bag when you're on it. The shoulder straps detach completely. The bag mounts to four webbing loops on the seat via cinch straps and G-hooks. Clamshell opening with a hinge at the bottom so it opens toward you when it's tail-mounted. A MacBook compartment in the back panel. A structured front face designed to take the abrasion of sitting against a seat at speed.
The target is under thirty seconds to convert, doable in gloves, no tools.
Where it's at right now
The v1 prototype is made from my old IKEA curtain.
Yes, really.
It looks exactly like what it is. A proof of concept sewn from whatever I had available. I should also mention that I have no product design background and almost no sewing experience. My partner got me a class at Brooklyn Sewing Academy as a loving gift, and that's basically the full extent of my formal training. So this is very much learning by doing.
The point at this stage wasn't to make something I'd actually ride with. It was to prove the conversion mechanism works and find out where the problems are before wasting real materials on the wrong decisions. It does convert. It also has about twelve things wrong with it that I'm working through now.
For v2 I've ordered fabric samples to start figuring out the right combination of weather resistance, structure, and abrasion protection for something that actually lives on a motorcycle. Hypalon, X-Pac, Cordura, Robic. X-Pac is likely what I'll use as a stand-in for the next prototype. Hypalon is the goal for the final contact surface but it's expensive, thick, and I doubt my beginner home machine can sew through it, so I'm not burning it on a version that's still figuring itself out.
Why I'm documenting this
Partly because I find other people's build processes genuinely interesting and I figure some of you might too. Partly because building in public keeps me honest. It's harder to quietly abandon something when people are watching. And partly because the people who end up using this bag should probably have some say in what goes into it.
That last part is something I'm taking seriously. Subscribe to the email list here and you'll get to vote on design decisions before they're finalized. Closure mechanisms, material choices, strap configurations, things that are still genuinely undecided. Not a fake poll. Actual decisions I haven't made yet.
Nothing is for sale. The bag is a long way from finished. But if you've ever bungee-corded a backpack to your seat and thought there has to be a better way, this is me trying to find it.