about panniers in general, and the ones i've ordered in particular.

my personal feeling, is that if you're going to use only one set of panniers, rear ones are the way to go. it seems much more stable.

a counterintuitive point about panniers (based solely on my own experience): you can ride with a single, fairly-heavy pannier without feeling off balance. one could end up with some deleterious lopsided muscle development if one doesn't at least alternate between the left & the right (my old panniers had a left & a right), but i've ridden with some serious weight in a single pannier -- like, a stack of library books, for example -- and never felt at all lopsided. balancing the bike when it's standing still can be tricky when it's only loaded on one side, but i've never had a problem riding that way.

the panniers i'm waiting for are a set of ortlieb 'backrollers', in yellow. i hate yellow. but a little-spoken-of fact of bags, is that if they are a light color on the inside, it's way easier to find stuff. i learned from the vendor that the yellow ones are also yellow on the inside. the other choices were black (nope) and red (nope). i went with "don't kill me with your car"-yellow. the ortliebs were reviewed really well, and seem quite roomy. they've got to be bigger than my last panniers. we'll see.