If you travel with Ortlieb bags long enough, the buckles will eventually break. They’re rather dainty because they’re designed to flex easily, so you don’t waste any time opening the bags even with cold fingers.
I had a hard time figuring out what parts to get when the buckles for my add-on pockets broke. Turns out they’re the same as the ones on my Sport Packer bags. When you replace them, though, you don’t need to worry about putting on the adjustable kind, because the straps are not meant to be adjustable. So you can use these:
https://us.ortlieb.com/products/repair-kit-for-stealth-side-release-buckles $7.00. These have an opening mechanism for easy repair, so you don’t have to cut and/or re-sew the straps. They fit with Office-Bag, Back-Roller, and Sport-Roller models with Stealth buckle, but remember, if you use these you won’t be able to pull the straps partway through to adjust the length.
You’ll need some way to cut off the old broken buckle, but the new one can just snap closed.
An inventory of the other buckles on the Ortlieb site:
Note that for buckles that are built into straps, you can get it replaced by paying a visit to a local upholsterer, shoemaker, or luggage repair shop. They’re likely to have the beefy sewing machines that can handle the bag material.
If I’m out and about and my bike gets stolen, along with all of my gear – or worse yet, I get accosted by highwaymen who steal all my things by force and leave me stranded – my concern will be immediate physical safety.
Beyond that, and assuming there is at least some honest infrastructure I can use, my concern will be replacing my equipment. I have some important things memorized, but I also have a bandana I made with various secret information encoded on it.
So, assuming the criminals don’t strip the clothing off my head, I can contact friends and family, share identifying information, and authenticate with some online services. Another thing I can do with the bandana is exchange sensitive data over the internet by encrypting it, because it’s got a slightly obfuscated copy of my private RSA encryption key on it.
How does that work?
Let’s assume I’ve lost everything but the bandana, so I’m starting from scratch with some new blank laptop I bought in a local shop.
Using that I can connect to the internet and download various pre-encrypted things I’ve created, and access them with the key in the bandana. But I can also have people encrypt things and send them to me.
That’s why I made this post: The explanation below is the bare minimum people will need to safely send me things, large and small:
First thing you need is this public key:
-----BEGIN PUBLIC KEY-----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-----END PUBLIC KEY-----
Grab this text and paste it into a file called id_rsa.pub.pkcs8
To send:
Let’s say you have a big thing you want to send: secret.zip, a zipfile full of stuff.
We’re going to make a temporary key, encrypt that file with the key, encrypt the temporary key with my public RSA key, and package secret.zip and the encrypted temporary key together, like so:
That gets me secret.zip, and the exchange is done.
It’s incredibly unlikely that I’ll ask anyone to send me things this way, but this page is here just in case.
A variation of this is how I intend to get all my data back in my hands even if I’m in a part of the world where everything I send or receive online is subject to eavesdropping or logging by weird state actors or random criminals.
While heading out of the apartment, I listened to a “Sawbones” podcast episode about Hepatitis C. Disease exposure was on my mind with the pressing crowds of Paris. Of course, for the rest of the day I obsessed over whether everyone I met had Hepatitis C…
Just a few blocks over I found a café that made an “iced mochaccino”. Will it stand up to my absurd mocha rating scale? We shall see! (Spoiler alert: No. It scored a 5 out of 10.)
I ordered tiramisu and it was totally different from what I got in Brussels, but still quite good. Also different from what I got anywhere in America. I should have expected this, really.
After scarfing that down I joined a work meeting with four other people in it, and listened with my earphones while I walked the half mile back to the apartment. A weird new first: Participating in a work meeting while strolling around in Paris with my phone, headphones, and some keys as my only equipment. I’m too old to be a yuppie, so I guess I’m an “uppie”.
Théatre du Caveau de la République has an adorable mascot! Some kind of buck-toothed pixie??
Back at the apartment I wrote code for several hours, then did some documentation, and then the rest of the day was mine. I set out again for food, choosing to stay on foot for a change instead of using the bicycle.
I randomly chose a restaurant, and sat down at the usual microscopic outdoor table. Dinner was a Caesar salad which was way too dry and some “fresh squeezed’ orange juice that definitely tasted as though it sat around all day. As I finished it, I almost laughed at the thought: “Hey, it’s my first unacceptable meal in Paris! A new milestone has been reached!”
As I dined, and later on as I walked slowly around the city in the evening gloom, I listened to some of “A Distant Mirror“. This was going to be a favorite of mine for the rest of the Paris visit. While contemplating stone walls, canals, and random strangers, I heard about the arrest and torture of the Knights Templar, who were basically yet another pointless aristocracy that ran afoul of the church and were devoured by it. Their head honcho was burned alive right in front of Notre Dame (like so many, many others, especially later when witch trials began.) Earlier in the week I’d passed by the very spot on my bike.
I also heard about the 13th-century expulsion of Jews from France, and how they were scapegoated as “money lenders” specifically by the church, which considered the lending of money “unclean” but was forced to admit it was a necessary part of large-scale commerce, so they mandated that role to Jews to deliberately enflame their status as “unclean”. All dictators need a scapegoat and a war, and the church was no exception. Tale as old as time.
Back at the apartment I went down a completely different digital rabbit hole, reading about old computer games from my adolescence that I’d missed out on because they were distributed only in other countries. I ran into a game called “Princess Maker“. Weird. And weirdly compelling.
It is what it sounds like — sort of. You guide a young lady through her adolescence by setting her work, school, and travel schedule. You don’t control her directly, or even interact with her directly. The majority of the interaction consists of picking menu items. If you get her stats and reputation high enough, she becomes queen of the land. Lesser outcomes include “housewife”, “con artist”, and “wandering wizard”.
There’s a framing device where you – the player – are described as a heroic knight that saved the kingdom from an invasion, and as a reward you asked to start an orphanage. I assume the framing device is there to give male players a more comfortable angle to participate: Consider it practice for being a Dad? (Well, as long as being a Dad consists of picking menu items with a mouse.) It’s the attitude that counts I suppose.
Your princess-to-be, chopping a tree down with some lumberjacks as an extracurricular activity.
Hey whaddaya know, there’s a PC-98 emulator for MacOS called “DosBox-x“, and some usage directions. An interesting rabbit hole. I felt a bit too lazy to actually play the game, but it got my mind churning about cultural differences again. When I was a boy growing up in California, role models of men spending their time raising children were pretty thin on the ground. You could join the army, fight crime, be a really good dancer or singer, kick ass at some sport, or perhaps be one of those interesting and windswept loner types, but being a Dad? Maybe you could be a “sitcom dad” like Tim Taylor and dispense some life lessons, but it was mixed in with acting like an idiot half the time.
Perhaps this is why I always felt a kinship with Scrooge McDuck, who spent half an hour each weekday living an adventurous life but also taking care of three nephews at the same time.
I’ve been doing long bike tours for over 15 years now, and for almost all of them I’ve carried a laptop so I can compute on the road, including pretty serious remote work as a software developer.
The metaphorical landscape has changed massively since I started doing this. All the tools have gotten way better. But one of the challenges I am constantly dealing with is: How the heck do you power and charge everything?
I’m always looking for ways to make my solution better, but I’ve hit on a nice one just now, and after going on a few trips to test it out, I figure I should pause here and document it for my own obsessive reference.
For example, after a day of working in some remote place and draining the battery, you can plug the battery into the Anker 737 and it will charge at 100 watts. Then at the same time you can plug in three other things, like your phone and GPS and headphones, and charge those as you go. These gadgets will charge at full speed and the battery will charge as well.
So all you need is one power socket. That’s important when you’re traveling in weird places, and power sockets are often in high demand. Here’s another thing you can do:
If you’re just using one port, it will deliver 100 watts. Both ports at once: 60 watts each.
In this configuration, both items charge at 60 watts.
Plug the other long cable into the Anker 737, and the battery park charges at 60 watts, while your laptop also charges at 60 watts. (Yes, this one adapter will put out 120 watts for you. I’ve done this a hundred times.) Now if you want, you can plug more things into your laptop and charge those as well. So with one socket you can charge your battery, your laptop, and six other devices, all at once. No swapping required.
With this setup, I can plug all these in and just walk away.
Another thing you can do with this adapter is, if someone else is claiming the only power socket in a place, you can offer to use yours instead. Since it has two USB-C outlets, you both can plug into it and share the socket at full power.
I’ve done exactly that in a few very crowded cafes.
It’s decently small, but the real advantage is, it’s extremely light.
By putting velcro patches on my small items (external drive, media card reader) I can use the short cables to stick them on the back of my laptop while they’re connected, keeping them nicely out of the way.
Altogether it’s a great setup. It’s extremely flexible, charges lots of things, provides a ton of backup power (good for using the laptop all day at a campsite), and in situations where time is limited, I can store up the maximum amount of energy by charging the battery at 100 watts … or the laptop and battery at a combined 120 watts.
