Coming apart at the seams.
Only halfway through our tour and we are loosing it, coming apart at the seams. At least our panniers are.
The split is only a couple of inches long at this point. We moved most of the heavy items to the other bag and put a strap around the ailing bag. That's just temporary until we can get some duct tape. Even the quack quack tape is a temporary solution until we can replace the bag. Unfortunately they don't make this model any more, or maybe that's a good thing. Several years ago our last panniers delaminated and suffered a catastrophic failure in a 100+ degree heat wave. We didn't learn our lesson from that experience and replaced them with the same model.
We crossed the Marquette iron range today. Mining in this area got started before the Gogebic range that we crossed a couple of days ago.
Remains of iron mining were very much in evidence in Ishpeming. The town had some nice murals to celebrate it's mining history.
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Ishpeming has an attractive high school. This is fitting for a place that produced nobel laureate Glenn Seaborg. He discovered Plutonium, and element 106 is named Seaborgium in his honor.
We visited an iron mining museum to learn a bit more about mining in the UP. The early mines went after the low hanging fruit - Magnetite ore and Hematite ore with high iron concentrations that was at or near the surface. Later mines went deeper and eventually went after ores with lower concentrations of iron.
Frantic mining to support the WW II war effort exhausted all of the high concentration ores. Today only Taconite ore is mined in huge open pit operations. The taconite is processed locally to increase the iron concentration before it is pelletized and shipped to refineries. Only one operational mine is left in Michigan.
I learned that of all the mining operations, the one I would least like to have participated in was "double jacking". To drill a hole in which to place dynamite, one poor guy in the middle holds a metal jack while two of his friends on either side take turns pounding the jack with 8 pound hammers. One missed swing and the guy in the middle will loose a finger and or a knee.
The museum features a mining tunnel to give you a feel for what it was like underground. Or at least they used to have a tunnel until Viktoriya decided to push this button.
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Have you considered Ortlieb panniers?
Mike
6 years ago
I'm not familiar with Ortlieb, but we'll take a look at them. Thanks for the suggestion.
6 years ago
6 years ago
Thanks for your advice. We have been very happy with the Ortlieb panniers we got based on your recommendation. They're waterproof, sturdy and very easy to put on and take off.
Alain
6 years ago