Unpopular opinion: your pannier is making you sweat more than the ride
I load 20 pounds of work clothes, lunch, and a laptop into one pannier on my rear rack and by mile 3 my back is soaked even in 55 degree weather. Turns out a single heavy side pulls the bike crooked, so I grip the bars tighter and burn extra energy fighting it, and I figured this out after a guy at the shop on 5th street asked why one of my shoulders was always sore. Has anyone split the load between two bags or just ditched the pannier for a frame bag, and did it actually cut the sweat?
Got the same shoulder soreness thing going on and never connected it to the pannier until now. When you say the bike pulls crooked, does it pull toward the loaded side or away from it? Trying to figure out if I should just move half my stuff to a second bag or start over with a frame setup.