the beta test of the roof bag is a resounding success. we did learn that you want to fill up the bag as much as you can to get the straps to proper tightness and to avoid the sound of the bag deforming in the breeze. if you don’t have it completely full then we found it’s best to have space all filled up in the front of the bag, again to avoid excess bag flapping noise. some people said they had problems with strap noise with other soft carriers, but we’re old hats at straps from hauling canoes around and know there’s a bit of an art to getting them juuuuuuuuust tight enough to not flap but not so tight that the wind makes them “whine”. so no strap noise for us.

works for us! very affordable ( i think we got it for $60 on sale), easy to put on and take off, provides lots of extra storage for trips which gives us enough room to put the two dogs comfortably in the back ( which they loved! ). and there was even room of the roof to strap on a christmas tree for the ride home! the christmas tree is only being help on by “friction” of straps from the roofbag, so hopefully it stays put for the 6 hour drive!

about the only downside that i i can think of, is it doesn’t present much of an obstacle to theft so on multiday trips or while taking extended time away from the car during a trip, i’m not sure how comfortable i would be having our possessions a knife slit way from being stolen. but that’s not our most common “use case” which is simply taking long day trips from point A to point B which as few stops as we can manage 🙂