I like my Profile Designs E-Pack. There it is in the photo on the right, strapped to the top tube, head tube, and stem of my Surly LHT. It’s handy for keeping road food like pretzels, fig bars, and Hundred-Mile Bars within easy reach. That’s particularly important in cold weather, when your jacket covers your jersey pockets. But the E-Pack isn’t weatherproof, and it needs a liner to keep it from accumulating crumbs. (I don’t want my LHT appropriated by a hungry bear while I sleep.) Up till now, I’ve been zipping my road food into small plastic bags, then sticking the bags into the E-Pack. The plastic bags do the job. They keep the E-Pack crumb-free, and they keep my food dry in rainshowers, not to mention moist and chewy on scorching summer days. But good as they are, ziplock bags aren’t perfect. They’re hard to open with one hand, and even if I remember to unzip them before I set off, the bags often collapse when I reach into them, forcing me to grope around for my food. It’s not a big deal, but it makes eating out my E-Pack harder than it should be—and it diverts my attention from the road. Not so good.

But then I found a solution to the problem. Best of all, it costs nothing. It also keeps a bit of nonrecyclable trash out of the waste stream. And what is this marvel of ingenuity? I simply converted a tea sack into a snack bag. It works great.

Maybe you’re wondering what a “tea sack” is. Well, I drink a lot of tea, but I’m not a big fan of teabags. So I buy bulk whole-leaf tea from the Upton Tea Company. Bulk tea used to come in tin canisters, but those days are (mostly) gone. Nowadays it’s packed in “food grade FDA approved poly/foil bag[s].” And it turns out that these bags make great snack bags. Here’s what a tea sack looks like, before…

and after tailoring…

Actually, the only “tailoring” needed is cutting off the surplus material, leaving just enough to fold over. Here I’m checking the final fit:

Perfect! And function follows form. Because the tea sack’s poly/foil sides are stiff, the bag holds its shape when opened. The contents are instantly accessible. Yet once the bag’s throat is folded over, it’s impervious to rain and sweat. Want road food to go? Like I (almost) said: It’s in the bag!

 
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