Carrying stuff

The most common way to carry luggage for multi-day adventures seems to be panniers on top of a rear rack.

I used them in the only long bike trip I did across Romania several years ago. Mine were heavy because I didn't know anything about bike travelling at the time and chose the first thing that got in my hand.  I am sure there are lighter versions, but even the lightest float around 1.5 kg which is enormous.
It would be blasphemy to ride a 8 kg carbon race bike with one of these - I imagine my Trek bike like a pure-breed horse trying to shake its heavy load off. :)
They offer plenty of space, which is like a double-edged sword - it makes you take a lot of stuff.
I remember them getting into my spokes in a 64 kph descent on the Transfagarasan. Fortunately the only consequence was that the pannier was ruptured and the spokes held, so I stayed in one piece.

I was happy to learn there are other alternatives to panniers. Mr. Iik does a good analysis on them so there's no point in doing that here. I'll just summarize my choices instead.

After narrowing down the options, the choice was to be made between these:

Rear rack + dry stuff sack

This is the Tubus Fly, one of the lightest out there at 330g for an 18kg load. 

Combine it with one of these to obtain a very versatile carrying solution:

Ultra-Sil Dry Daypack - 90g, 22L

Viscacha bag

Revelate Designs is one really interesting company. They make very cool, functional, well-thought bike bags which can be places allover the bike.

The Viscacha is a seat-mounted bag, so no is rack required.

Viscacha - 391g, 6-14L

Terrapin

The Terrapin (also by Revelate) seems similar to the Viscacha, only that you can come with your own dry sack and stuff it in.

Terrapin - 368g, 14L

It was a tough choice but I will go with the Tubus Fly + Ultra-sil dry daypack as I find it to be the most versatile solution. The sack can also be used for hiking (which I intend to do in my days off the bike). On top of the sack there is place for hanging clothes to dry. On the rack rails I can attach more stuff (like the GoPro camera for some interesting filming angle - might work). And most importantly it can carry a lot of weight in case I need to carry extra water bottles with me (like in Death Valley or Grand Canyon area for example).

For shorter tours I would have definitely chosen one of the Revelate bags since they don't require a rack. In those cases it's also worth considering the other options from Revelate, like the frame bags, really cool stuff.

Front carriers

The main carrier matter now settled, let's move to the front area.

Seeing how light, spacious and adaptive they are, I now have love affair with dry stuff sacks. 

So I'll use two more small ones like the one in the image.

A 2L dry sack will go under the handlebars, attached with some nylon straps. What it will hold I haven't decided yet (it may not even be required if I manage to squeeze most of the things in the 22L rear one).

I have to see how to attach the straps without ruining the waterproof bag.

Another 1L one will go in one of the bottle cages and it will hold the rain gear, warmers, and other stuff I want to access quickly in case of weather turning nasty.

Mr. Iik uses a 1L plastic bottle (cut in the middle to insert things in it) to hold his rain gear on the seat-tube and I loved the idea, so I thought I do it in the same spirit, only a bit more elegant.

On the top tube, near the stem I may use a small bag for storing snacks, money, maybe tools. I'm not sure though about storing tools (which I hope to use very rarely) in such an easily accessible place.

This will be my setup which I will update in this post once I get to experiment with it. There are many other options worth considering and there is really no one-fit-all solution.

One of my criteria was also how easy I can obtain this equipment here in Romania. Some of the cool small companies that make ultra-light niche products are somewhere like in Wyoming, don't ship here, or it takes too long, or it's too expensive.

So I am glad there are European online stores like Bike24, and there are innovative European manufacturers like Cumulus, Rab, Inov8 so we have easy access to the good stuff that was previously accessible only from America.