I’ve made rough estimates of the interior capacity of my bags before with packing peanuts, or by guessing roughly from the basic dimensions, and I’ve even tried it with water. Today I decided it’s time to figure it out once and for all.

Is it one liter?

Is it two liters?

So, I tried something else. Water is messy, packing peanuts are inaccurate. I thought of beans, but no one will want to hang around if I eat that many beans when I’m done measuring with them. So I tried pasta.

One liter of macaroni

Small Saddlebag, containing one liter of macaroni

Small Saddlebag containing three liters of macaroni

Uh-oh, that’s all the macaroni they had. It’s just about to the “fill line” so to speak, so maybe it has a three-liter capacity. But I think I can get some orzo in there too!

Three liters of macaroni and one liter of orzo.

Yep, all that pasta really went into that bag.

So, three liters of macaroni and one liter of orzo, and it still closes. Call it a capacity of 3-4 liters depending on how full you stuff it. I think we can also call it a “carb load”!

Now I’m stuck, I didn’t buy enough pasta for the large, so I started adding the empty boxes:

Six liters of pasta, plus three orzo boxes and a macaroni box

Three liters of orzo, three liters of macaroni

Two macaroni boxes, four orzo boxes, six liters of pasta

It… mostly still closes!

Yeeep, I can still strap that jacket in there…..

The orzo boxes are 7.75″ x 4″ x 1.75″, or 54.25 cubic inches, or 880 ml.

The macaroni boxes are 6.25″ x 5.125″ x 2.5″, or 80 cubic inches, or 1.3 ml.

That makes about six liters of boxes and six liters of pasta. It’s a tight fit, but the boxes aren’t taking up all the nooks and crannies either, so I’ll call it 12 liters, give or take. Plus a jacket.

Now for the exterior pockets:

Side Pocket with one liter of orzo

That managed to zip shut onto two more liters of orzo 

So, there you have it, and now you know exactly how big they are. 

Got any favorite pasta dishes?

Just for April 1!

Forget shaving grams; this amazing new design can lighten your bike by UP TO TWENTY FIVE POUNDS*, OR MORE!†

Let’s face it, randonneuring gear is heavy. All those fenders, steel frames, plastic bags to keep brevet cards dry, cuesheets, it all adds up to precious grams that just slow you down. Not to mention all the other useless crap randonneurs carry around, just because you have to in order to look like a real randonneur. Jackets, spare tubes, pumps, tire levers, allen wrenches, clean socks, spare batteries, reflective gear. And it seems like the bigger your bag, the more stuff you find to put in it! Wouldn’t it be great if all that weight just disappeared?

Well, now it can! The brand new Weight Weenie Pro Edition of the Dill Pickle Large Saddlebag. It has the same great features as the standard Large Saddlebag, and weighs even less! But the real benefit of this new innovative design is in how it cleverly reduces the weight of all that other useless baggage.

• The bottom of the bag is open, so that anything you are tempted to carry around will fall right through.

• The exterior pockets are mounted upside down so that any heavy objects you place in them will be INStANtdiscardEd™®©¥

• For the deluxe model, interior mesh pockets are open at the bottom to help keep the stuff you won’t be carrying anymore better organized

• The brevet card pocket zipper has no slider, which saves an entire gram all by itself, in addition to the onerous weight of that pesky brevet card!

• The female half of the buckles are also omitted, because you wouldn’t want a girly bag. (Alternatively, if you hate men and think boys have cooties, you may request that the male half be omitted instead). And if the buckles are impossible to buckle, you will not be tempted to try and strap in and carry cinder blocks or lead weights.

Of course, everyone knows that when bike stuff gets lighter it gets more expensive. The pros spend hundreds of dollars to shave off an ounce here and there. That makes the Dill Pickle Weight Weenie Edition a fantastic bargain, because at only $9,999 (not including optional extras) it costs less than $25 for every ounce saved!††

BUT WAIT! There’s MORE! If you order TODAY, you can also pre-order the up-coming UltraSecure Classic Vintage Steel Rando Bag™®©. You’ll never lose your stuff again, plus it is made of 100% vintage steel, so of course you have to have it for randonneuring. All you do is send me the stuff you want to carry, and you will receive your new UltraSecure Vintage Steel Rando Bag ™®© with all of your stuff already welded securely inside so that you will never lose it ever again!

ORDER YOURS NOW!

* When compared with a saddlebag containing twenty five pounds of bricks

† No, the phrase “up to twenty five pounds or more” is not especially precise

†† It saves twenty five pounds, see above.

Howdy Picklers,

Thanks to everyone who filled out the survey! As always, your comments and feedback are immensely helpful and appreciated.

So in case you were wondering how you fit in with the rest of the survey respondents, here are a few stats:

• Over half of the respondents were men between 40 and 60. No one listed their age as “Wouldn’t you like to know!” which guess means you don’t mind telling me.

• 5% of you appear to have been misdirected, as you were actually looking for cucumbers in brine.

• Your two most common cycling activities were recreational group riding. Four people claimed to be one-person unicycling polka bands, and I sincerely hope that the four of you will get together and make a quartet album accompanied by viral video.

• You enjoy (or presumably enjoy) rides of all different lengths, and the vast majority of you (86.5%) seem to be just fine with mixing miles and kilometers.

There’s some new stuff in the pipeline as I have a chance to get to it, and I’ll keep you posted.

You can still take the survey if you feel underrepresented, and of course I always welcome any comments, feedback, and photos.

Keep the rubber side down!

Please take a moment to complete this customer feedback survey. You can still take it even if you’ve never bought, tried, or even seen a Dill Pickle item. Your feedback is invaluable in helping me make improvements to existing products and design new ones.

Also, I’d love to create a gallery on this site of customer photos with their Dill Pickle Gear stuff in action. If you have a photo you’d like to be included, please send it to store *at* dillpicklegear *dot* com.

Thanks very much in advance!