96 - AMB
TESTEDWe’ve said it before, but one of the hardest
things about travelling with your bike is
travelling with your bike. When your mountain
bike is exactly what you want to take with you
for your dream mountain bike holiday or event,
then obviously you need to make sure it gets
there in one piece.
There are a variety of bike bags on the
market, ranging from soft bags where you add
your own padding, padded bags, soft bags with
hard bases and wheels, complete hard cases
that cocoon your bike in close to 20kg of plastic,
and options like the VeloVault 2, which is a
compact hard case that has four wheels and
useful handles to make carting it around a little
bit easier.FIRST IMPRESSIONS
Having witnessed the wheelbases of my bikes
grow each time I get a new one, I did view the
VeloVault2 a little cautiously. Would my bike
actually fit in it? Or would I need to dismantle it
so much it would be too much of a headache?
The smaller your bike box is, the easier it is to
cart around. Be that in and out of cars, or on
public transport. Even for navigating through
barriers at the airport it is easier if the bike bag
is more compact. Any smugness about saving
money and weight using a cardboard box isusually gone after the saga of getting to the
airport and checked in. The VeloVault2 is 125cm
long at the base, 31cm wide at the bulge for the
cassette and 91cm high at it’s highest point. The
whole lot weights 12.3kg.
If your bag of choice means you need to take
so much off that you have an hour at the other
end building and prepping your bike, then it is
worth being mindful of whether it’s the right
choice. To me, that’s a reasonable sacrifice for
a long trip where your bike isn’t being packed
down again for quite a long time. For a weekend
or week-long trip that much time is out of the
question. My personal go-to bike bag is the
Thule RoundTrip Traveler, and at a push I can
unpack my bike in under 8-minutes. And that’s
with the wheels, rotors, derailleur, chain, pedals
and bars removed, and the suspension deflated.
That was a specific timed effort but you get the
idea, you want something that is convenient and
manageable. What’s nice about the VeloVault2
is the four wheels. Two are fixed, and two can
turn. So this means it won’t follow you like an
untrained puppy when you pull it, but instead it
can be guided with the handle or your hand on
top of it. The wheels do sit nicely into the shell a
little to make them less vulnerable in transit.
Wheels can be a bike bag’s worst enemy, as
for many airlines or airport staff, it is policyfor bike bags with wheels to go upside down
on the trailers that cart your luggage from the
terminal to the plane and back again. If it has
wheels, it goes upside down. My own bag has
two wheels at one so it only rolls when lifted,
and it still gets tipped upside down. The tip here
is pack accordingly. A bag like the VeloVault2 is
a hard case, not a soft case with a hard base.
Upside down doesn’t matter - it’s strong!
The VeloVault2 is no featherweight. But given
some soft bags are about 10kg that’s not a bad
weight for a hard case that needs little extra
padding. It does push the bike to the realms
of those with a 30kg item limit. It would be
hard to get much more than an all-out XC race
bike in here at sub 23kg, especially if you were
travelling with any spares or proper tools.
You would just have to have a second piece of
luggage, which isn’t a huge cost for domestic
travel if you book in advance.
With the bag opened up like a clamshell,
there is a padded side with lots of straps and
a moulded side for wheels, a cut piece of foam
and a supporting pole to prevent the box being
crushed.WORDS AND PHOTOS: MIKE BLEWITTVeloVault2
Bike Box