Half of a project of the day
When I was in the middle of riding the birkie I mentioned that it would be moderately easy to make a saddlebag support if you had enough steel tubing, a pipe bender, a vice, and a drill. And when I got home and unpacked my (hilariously overfull) handlebar bag I realized that I already had all those things, so there was nothing stopping me from making one myself.
What I didn’t have (or have but can’t find) is a piece of aluminum billet to drill and cut as the seatrail clamp. So after a mere week of looking for it, I decided I’d just bend the support now and then drill and cut the seatrail clamp when I got the aluminum. So after 20 minutes (40 minutes if you count the prototype#0 attempt, which had one of the bends in the wrong place due to my bending one leg from the wrong end. Whoops. At least I’ll be able to use some parts of it when I braze up a porteur rack some time in the future) of fussing with the super high quality hardware store pipe bender, a piece of steel pipe has been converted into an saddlebag support that just needs a bracket & a saddlebag to go onto the midlifecrisismobile.
(Update: And now it’s ¾ths of a project of the day; I found an aluminum stump piece that used to fit around a 4x4, and it’s nice ¼th inch aluminum plate. I’ve hacked a chunk out of it and cut it into two stout beams, and now have to clamp them together and drill holes for the seat rails & saddlebag tubing to fit into.)