Gypsy1

I have to say that the question I asked comes from the fear of the unknown... In addition to the attachment of the possession I found along the adventure so far, and being honest, I myself don't even locking the bike as often as one would expect... As many of you have mentioned it is situation specific and the "dirty" clothes idea is rally a tactic which I used many times; not that I get to a location, park the bike then take out my dirty clothes. I found it very easy some mornings when changing clothes to just hang the day old (or many days) outside to air clean until I find a body of water or laundromat.

In the short trip of 6 months so far not including the year of local touring the bags have been changed out for many reasons. The Rivendall 2000's saddle bad just fell apart. Before departing I noticed stress points along a several corner stitching and had a friend with industrial sewing machine enforce those points but not even 30 miles out, the bag ripped and in Sheridan, WY met someone who re-enforced the tear and corners again. After taking a crazy mountain / ATV trail the bag separated again in the Bridger National Forest. The one of the Brooks front bags attachment system (made of plastic) broke off in that same location. When I circled back into Colorado to Fort Collins, I met someone selling a full set of brand new Arkel Bags for 60% off it's retail: "Give Thanks", I gave the Brooks bags to a local bike / consignment shop to donate to whatever organization they chose.

So, the reason with updating this post... Security of "How to Secure Bags" or "Keeping Bike Safe", I'm not sure if it's highly important as just getting on the road and figuring out the wonders of Nomadic Living. Thank you all for your supportive conversation!

Colorado Kid

Back in the old days, everyone sold, "Money Belt". Can't find them anymore. It looked like a good idea at the time. Has anyone used them and if so, how did it turn out?

Tourist in MSN

Never used a money belt. I have several old shirts that have zippered passport sized pockets in addiition to regular pockets. And a couple pair of Ex Official travel pants that had a zippered passport sized pocket at ankle height where you would never notice it was even there.

I had heard that the touristy area of Lisbon had a lot of pick pockets. I carried enough in a wallet in my regular pants pocket to buy lunch and a few souvineers but my hoard was in the zippered ankle pocket where no pick pocket would ever get to it. I did not want to lose my lunch money, but I basically brought along a wallet that I could afford to lose without much concern.

fourfa

Zombie thread... Backpacking for months around Indonesia and Cambodia and such, I carried an old dirty wallet with an expired driver's license, an old library card, a cancelled credit card, a grocery store coupon card etc, and a couple small bills in my pants pocket. Someone wants to rob me, pull out the decoy wallet, toss it one direction, run the other.

Something like this with passport and big bills in a waterproof pouch (Aloksaks have been working for me for decades but ziploc works for a while). Waterproof because all kinds of things can and will run when wet - I had the ink from a handwritten note run onto a stack of wet large denomination bills once and had to plead with a bank to swap them out (lucky me it worked). The real ATM and credit cards in there somewhere. Silk is your friend - synthetic will stink real quick.

Miele Man

When I'm in doubt about an area and I want to stop and go into a store to resupply, I'll open the door to the store and ask if I can bring my bike in and leave it by the cashier or somewhere close by within sight. I don't want to be like the cross Canada tourist who had their bike and everything on it stolen in Montreal. I never found out how or if that person was able to continue their tour or if they got their stuff back.

Cheers

djb

on that note,
for sale
Surely LhT, plus some sort of panyers that attach to these racky things, name on panyers is Ortleeb, all yours for $200, meet me at the Vendome Metro station.