Medium Cafe Bag and Strap Adjustment--help please??

Hello!
Big happiness and one small problem.

First off, thank you to everyone who posts so descriptively and helpfully on this forum! I'd been looking for my perfect "every day carry" bag for a long time (and I didn't even know the term EDC existed until my current search). I'd gotten it down to a Cafe' bag, and was vacillating between medium and large (as it seems many people do). Price was no different either way, since waist straps to me are a no-brainer, the LCB gets them included, and the MCB it's an extra $5. The member who commented that when she had a large one, she tended to overfill it was especially helpful to me, thinking about carrying lots on one shoulder.

So, after existing with a couple mocked-up rectangles in the relevant sizes laying around my room, I did get a Medium CB, in black/wasabi. I love how it looks and feels, and how sturdy it seems to be. It easily fits my netbook if I want to bring that, and I like the straps and being able to tether things. I live in AK and hike a lot; I'd use a lumbar pack for longer hikes but this has come along some already, and held up to slithering down icy hillsides, etc, just fine.

My problem is with the strap. I call it a small problem because it's as much about me as it is about the strap. but still...When I get the strap at a comfortable length, the tri-glide rides right on my bony shoulder! I did get an ultrasuede strap, but when it's strapped over the tri-glide, it won't close all the way.

I realized, like I said, that I always get some version of this with bags (the shoulder strap on my lumbar pack is the worst). I'm very thin and petite, and have a short torso/long legs. I think it's as much the narrowness of my frame as the height (I'm not that short, 5'4").

Has anyone else devised good solutions to this issue? To me, the obvious thing would be to cut some of the strap out of the part looped up by the triglide, and then stitch the remainder back together. But the very helpful staff at Tom Bihn told me that to do so would invalidate warranties, etc. And I know I'm not the cleverest at thinking up solutions in this situation.

Is there any way to shorten the adjustable part of the strap without actually cutting it, and while preserving its adjustability?

Many many thanks in advance--grateful to be able to thank you!
Ela

I would adjust the strap just a little lower or higher so that the Triglide falls just on the front or back of your shoulder.
This way, the Ultrasuede Strap fits over the webbing.

The Triglide bearing the weight of a netbook would not feel comfortable on any shoulder.

Do you wear the bag cross shoulder?


I just thought of another solution. You could order the Waist Strap (if you don't have it already) and the 1" Cafe/Ristretto Messenger Stabilizer - Stabilize your bag when riding your bike - TOM BIHN, this will give you more ways to adjust the Strap to your best level of comfort.

The bag shown in The Messenger Stabilizer pictures is a Small Cafe Bag which has the same Shoulder Strap set up as the Medium's.
The customer has set up his Shoulder Strap with the Triglide shortenend let's say, 30%, but it looks much higher up, in the curve of his back, because of the Messenger Stabilizer.


I own SCBs and LCBs, no MCB.

The one big difference between the MCB and the LCB is the ability to choose shoulder strap, The Absolute Shoulder Strap is the best, it has build in cushioning, perfect to handle heavy loads.

My shoulders need the Absolute Strap when I carry a netbook or other items which makes for a very full LCB.


Please share more about your Alaska adventures! :)

I second backpack's suggestion, with a few more details from my own experiences....

I've actually found that there can be variation in strap length from bag to bag. With the first MCB I ordered, I would've had to tighten the strap all the way to get it short enough for me. I ended up returning it for color reasons, and the MCB I got and kept had a shorter strap. Not sure how feasible it would be to try to get a bag with a length that works better for you, unless you happen to be visiting Seattle soon and will be able to go in and check them out in person?

With the replacement MCB, I initially had the same issue you did with the triglide (didn't know that's what it was called until now!) hitting my shoulder uncomfortably. While I couldn't wear the bag any lower, I realized I could wear it a little higher. But the triglide was in the way of the plastic strap pad... until I realized that with a little work I could move the plastic strap pad to the other side of the triglide.

When I use the ultrasuede wrap with it (which I do very rarely - I don't like how bulky it is when not wearing the bag), I do have to cinch up the shoulder strap even more since the ultrasuede wrap is wider than the plastic shoulder pad. But that works ok because I usually use the ultrasuede wrap when I have a heavier load, and heavier loads are more comfortable to carry when the bag is worn higher and doesn't bounce as much, like in the customer photos of the messenger stabilizer that backpack linked to. (Haven't gotten one of those yet, but I intend to!)

Hope this helps!

I have the exact opposite problem being 6'2" and 240lb, but wouldn't shortening the strap be an option? You'd need to cut off the buckle, heat seal the end to stop it fraying and get it sewn back on with a bartack machine. I don't know if TB would do it for you, but, if not, a cobbler should be able to do the bartacking for you.

Thanks, backpack! I did get the waist strap--that was a no-brainer for me, but the stabilizer looks like a great idea. I went back and forth on medium or large bag, partly because of the removable strap issue, but the bottom line is, I wanted a bag that wasn't too big--small enough to be a purse, conceptually, but big enough to contain all the bits and pieces I accumulate between being a writer and having food allergies so needing to bring stuff with and hiking the beach and picking up rocks... Any bigger, and I should be putting it in a daypack. But I totally get the benefit of being able to remove and replace the strap entirely.

I'm not the biggest Alaskan adventuress--there are many who put me to shame. But living in Homer, with Kachemak Bay laid out in front of you, it's hard to resist a certain amount of scampering down bluff faces and on the beach, at the very least. And my very dear friend goes out in his inflatable raft aptly named Patches, and we have camped on islands and mainland on the other side of the bay, tracking bears, etc. There were two moose on the road when I came home this evening!

Teresa, thank you! (I'm a poet too.) That is so interesting about the variation in length. I love my bag's color, alas ;) What color did you get?
Yes, I had to be taught the word "triglide" by the staff member I spoke with on the phone--my attempt at describing it was very clumsy, so I'm glad he figured out what I was talking about!
I will play more with the carry position, but I'd really like to be able to carry it at comfort point without having to fudge it.
Thanks again!

Fat Crip, wow! I did quite a bit of my growing up in the UK. Are you in Berwick? Wow, yes, you're a very lot bigger than me, like almost 150lbs bigger (although at your height that's not a huge mass, non?)--between us we prove the point that it must be impossible to make bags that fit everyone perfectly, because not everyone is an average size!

That's why I love the "small/medium/large" cafe bag concept, and why I wish all of them had detachable straps so that people could choose/buy/customize whichever of the wonderful straps Tom Bihn makes would best go with them. Then, a person could pick their cafe bag and color. And then they could choose what kind of strap, and whether to get a waist strap as well, and a stabilizer as well, and then they could pick their straps for internal organization, and their organizer pouches if they wanted. And then everyone who bought a cafe bag would essentially have their own unique custom-assembled bag, and would feel some creativity/authorship in the process thanks to all the different options and color choices.

I found a tape measure really useful when deciding what I was going to buy. And although I loved the large cafe bag's detachable strap, aside from (like I said before) not wanting to (be able to) put a daypack's worth of stuff in an edc bag, I had to acknowledge--I'm a small person!--and now I have the medium bag, it's very clear, the large would have been way too big.
Shortening the strap is my best option right now, as I see it, but it invalidates the warranty--makes the bag my own with no fallback, I guess. I'm so intrigued that there is variation in length possibility though.
Now, what do you do to lengthen straps that aren't long enough?

Not too long ago, there was a discussion on the forum about same issue. I am not great at searching and linking :( but someone might be able to help to provide a link to that discussion. It will not help you and I, though. But good reading. :)

I am under 5 feet, so all the TB straps are too long for me. I can only wear the cafe bags crossbody due to the issues you descibed. The solution to these issues is to make the strap adjustable on both ends.

I hope that the next update of the cafe bags include removable straps - adjustable on both ends :). Sometimes, I like to bring my SCB (or MCB) on a trip. When I do, I use it as a packing cube inside a larger bag. In those instances, I wish I could take the strap off the cafe bag. The Co-Pilot is my preferred personal item bag. I wish I can move the shoulder strap from the Co-Pilot to the cafe bag when I get to my destination. I keep hope!

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Originally Posted by ela

Shortening the strap is my best option right now, as I see it, but it invalidates the warranty--makes the bag my own with no fallback, I guess.

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Have you discussed this with TB? They might even do it if you ask.

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Now, what do you do to lengthen straps that aren't long enough?

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The Absolute shoulder strap is now just about long enough... they added a few inches a couple of years ago. That being said, my wife's MCB strap is just about long enough too. I'm after a Dyneema SCB just as soon as a suitable colour comes up.

Oh and I live just a little (25miles) south of Edinburgh at the bottom end of the Pentland hills. Berwick is a fair hoof to the south East (100miles?). Is that where you lived?

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Originally Posted by ela

Teresa, thank you! (I'm a poet too.) That is so interesting about the variation in length. I love my bag's color, alas ;) What color did you get?

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I ended up with Conifer/Steel for my MCB (the first one I ordered was Olive/Wasabi). My first Cafe Bag was a Black/Wasabi SCB, and I recently got a Plum/Wasabi SCB too.

Congratulations! Can you post photos? I always wondered how conifer looks.