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I am not a physically large person -- in fact a new acquaintance of Julie's apparently described me as a "petite Chinese man". In any case, my stature impacts the amount of stuff that I can comfortably carry, and as the Washington Post notes [ via Merlin ], we Americans are hauling more and more stuff around with us.
As a bookish youth, I hauled lots of books (required and extracurricular) to and from school. I remember having to replace bookbags because they were destroyed. I have no idea of how I'd stack up against today's kids, although I do know that a friend's twelve year old has a 22 lb backpack for school. I watched while the bag got put on the scale.
It's definitely the case that the longer I am going to be away from the house, the more I carry. Living on an island, and having the associated ferry ride and waiting time definitely means that I want to have stuff to keep me occupied. Kick that up a notch if I then am going on to an airport.
I wrote a bit about my bag/carrying setup last year, but a few things have changed. The eVest is still going strong, especially during the cooler parts of the year. The thing that's changed is that a decent portion of the time, I am packing a growing collection of camera gear. There is no way that I'm going to get my camera gear into one of the two main compartments of a Brain Bag. I could just dump everything in there, but the thought of all the equipment jumbling around in there just isn't going to make it. So I needed a camera bag, which for now is a Lowepro Slingshot 200 AW. This is an over the shoulder bag, which means that I can't carry it and the Brain Bag. The laptop bag that I was using works great in conjunction with the Brain Bag, but it's just marginal as a standalone laptop bag, which was fine when I bought it. Since I can't use the Brain Bag as often, I needed a different solution. I have a very nice Google laptop bag, which I've tried once. It was serviceable, but there were a few things that I didn't really like about it. Part of the Search Champs schwag was a Timbuk2 messenger style laptop bag, which is what I am going to try next.
Current weight: Camera bag 9lbs, Laptop bag 13lbs. I'm definitely carrying.
Of course when I am just carrying camera gear alone I go full bore with a Tamrac backpack that can hold 5 or 6 lenses and every other accessory I own.
I'll be curious to hear how you make out with your new system. Let us know.
Posted by Steven Wilcox at Thu Feb 9 20:22:36 2006
The recommendation I was given, beside daily calcium with vitamin D (to compensate for the lack of sunshine in the Pacific Northwest), was using a backpack. Bearing weight causes weightbearing bone to build. That's why you saw me with a backpack at Northern Voices this year. I haven't solved the jumble problem for the camera gear. I think hollowed out foam blocks may be best.
Posted by orcmid at Sun Feb 12 21:55:18 2006
When next you're looking for bags for gear, you might take a look at Crumpler's stuff - I got one of their backpacks at MacWorld a few years back and it's got great shoulder straps that make carrying around a 15" PB a lot more ergonomic (when is Apple going to build a 3 lb PB?), and room for lots of other stuff, and they're built as tough as nails. Australian quirky company - http://www.crumpler.com.au/home.php
Cheers - Oren
Posted by Oren at Fri Feb 17 22:27:39 2006
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