Review: Osprey Savu 5 Lumbar Bike Pack

 I'd been riding the Roadini quite a bit, and sometimes take it out for long rides where the onboard storage isn't quite enough. Having more water bottle cages would help. The Osprey Savu 5 was on sale at the manufacturer website for $30, so I bought one. There are other versions of the pack, including one that has just one bottle holder (but the bottle holder is in an awkward place that splits the storage section into 2!), and others have built-in hydration reservoir, but hydration reservoirs are a pain to clean.

In office/commute use, the Savu 5 is fine. It will hold your keys, a mask, water bottles, and even a blu-ray that you need to return to the library on the way home. I then tried it on a ride with significant (but not a lot of) steep climbing off-road, and had a severe backache when the water bottle holders were loaded. Do people really do serious mountain biking with this? I thought to myself. I considered returning it, but we had the Waterton Lakes/Jasper trip coming up and I brought it along in case there were some minor hikes where I only needed to carry water.

For around town hikes and walking it was great. For a long distance walk, I usually brought the Deuter instead since it was unpredictable what my kids would want me to carry. But it was at Whistler where I really used the pack. There, I saw all the other variants of the Osprey Lumbar Pack in use as well, with many people using the hydration reservoir version.

Here's the deal --- a downhill rental bike doesn't come with water bottle cages, and you're not going to install one since the front wheel is expected to throw up plenty of dirt to cover the mouth of your water bottle. But this pack keeps the bottle high and away from dirt. The top zippered pocket is the perfect place to store your phone, and the side zipper pockets can hold your wallet, room keys, or park pass. The main compartment can be used to store your elbow pads and knee pads while you walk from your room to the rental bike shop. This pack is perfect for that! And in a downhill mountain bike park, you barely ride the bike up anything, so there's no way for your back to ache.

So now I know that when some manufacturers/reviewers say Mountain Bike, they mean "Downhill Mountain Bike at a Ski Resort where you don't have to pedal up the hill." Those of us who live in the Bay Area would never have thought of such a use case which was why it was such a foreign concept to me! In any case, now that I understand the use case, I'd say that this is the perfect pack for a downhill MTB park. It's not bad for a flat commute. Just don't expect to wear it and be comfortable on the kind of climbing you need to do frequently in the Bay Area. At $30.50 it's a great value. I wouldn't pay the regular price for it. Boen loved it because he could put a stuffed animal in it, but it turned out he's not hefty enough to wear it and have it not slip!