What's the true story on luggage?

During this time, we learned some things early on but gradually evolved into some other truths. I have always liked bags, personally, and tend to buy little ones for my camera or books or water, etc., etc., driving my wife to distraction. (This interest is in addition to my love of jackets, computers and any type of gadetry, all of which she finds equally upsetting, but I have to say she is a good sport about it!) But the small ones really are far less important than those big luggables you will need for most long trips. OK, here we go:

Purpose

It may seem obvious, but the first thing to decide is what the purpose of your bags will be. A simple example is the difference between someone who travels primarily by car vs. those of you who are always in the air. If your travel is mostly in your car, you need to look for a lot of small to medium sized soft bags and a suit or dress bag that you can lay accross the bags in the back. This will allow maximum flexibility and assure that none of the bags are too heavy. But when you are flying, the needs are totally different. Soft bags may work, depending on what you are taking with you, but if you want some protection for the contents you need to be looking at something with a frame.

To wheel or not to wheel?

Easy one. If you can get a bag with wheels, do it. Case closed. In most cases, 2 wheels are better than 4, simply because of the laws of physics. (I knew all time in the labs that would come in handy someday!) The 2-wheel bags are simply more stable. Having said all that, I am not too much for the backpacks on wheels, because I fear the wheels may at some point end up on my exceedingly weak back, but that is purely a personal opinion.

If you are traveling to Europe, wheels can be even more important, because one of your options is train travel. If you plan to take advantage of the great railway system in Europe (and, we strongly recommend that you do!), your discount luggage selection is very important! Do not -- let me repeat that -- DO NOT even consider taking more than a meduim sized, 22"-25" max bag, along with possibly a small handbag, briefcase or backpack on the train.

What you need to know about rail travel, even on the absolute best trains such as the Eurostar between London and Paris or Brussels, Italy's Cisalpino and Germany's ICE train, is that their baggage handlers really care about your bags - that's because YOU are the baggage handler! Get it? Right - no one is there to lift those bags up off the platform (often a pretty big step up!) when you are struggling to board the train while worried that you are holding the whole national rail system up because you are taking too long!

Making matters worse, sometimes the only place to put your bag is over your seat. Now, I don't know about you, but I never strived to bench press anything except an occasional pint, so I really do not want to lift a 50 lb. bag over my head to place it in a luggage rack one seat width away from where I am standing in the isle of a wobbling train!

Maybe that's too much detail, because I really do not want to discourage you from the European Rail system, but it illustrates the point well, that the type of travel you are planning should dictate what luggage you take with you. Car trips - small to medium soft bags. Air - larger bags with some structure, remembering what is going to happen at the other end in the way of luggage handling and ground transportation. Rail - small to medium soft or frame bags, but as light weight as you can find. Edit Text

What brands of luggage should I buy?

This one varies all over, so I will just tell you what we use. We have a lot invested in bags because of the travel-related lifestyle we enjoy and because we like a lot of flexibility. If you take one trip a year, your needs would obviously be different. First, we have a small and a large hanging bag with wheels. Each of these holds enough clothes in a relative wrinkle-free way to get by for a fairly long trip, plus having lots of little pockets for the odd bits. We each have a 22" rolling bag with a frame and a 25" or 26" rolling bag with a frame. All of these bags have integrated hanging folders, which work OK but are never entirely wrinkle-free. The smaller ones also expand, which we find hugely helpful. We usually do not use them both unless we are traveling back and forth to the UK and plan to stay for a long period.

We also have a 30" framed bag with wheels which is a real monster because we tend to pack it to the gills and have to resort to prayer that we will not be charged for extra weight once we have man-handled it onto the scales at the airline check-in counter. Needless to say, it lives in our storage room under a plastic cover most of the time. Finally, we each have a small rolling bag which is suitable to take on board and place in the overhead. As time has gone on, and we have learned to consolidate more and more, we find that we increasingly use these small bags. On a typical trip we will mix and match these bags, but typically when we fly from the US to the UK and are staying for more than a few weeks, we bring all three of these last bags plus a small briefcase or backpack.

One word of note about the small "rollies". We got them in the UK. For some reason, there is often a slight differnce between size regulations for carry on luggage between the US and the rest of the world. Most US carriers allow cabin baggage to be a little larger than the international carriers, so we decided to take the conservative route and bought a couple of Samsonites designed especially to meet international standards. These bags are not really durable enough to check, although we've seen it done with varying results, but they hold up just fine the way we use them. One tip would be to travel over without one and purchase it in the UK or Eurpoe at one of the airport Tax-Free shops - they will be glad to help you, and this will assure you can bring back those extra goodies in great style.

The most important thing to note here is that we have spent extra money to get bags that are well designed and durable for the intended purpose. We may have an old hard-side bag laying around somewhere, but the bags we use regularly are framed bags with ballistic nylon. This is the best possible material, and it holds up well under even heavy use.

OK, I'll go out onto a little limb here and tell you what we like. But, remember that the bag world is changing always, and some brands will imporve while others may go the other way. Personal differences and preferences must be also considered, but generally speaking your bags should have the best possible balance between strength and weight, the stronger and lighter the better, and should have a minimum of protruding objects waiting to be knocked off. All our bags fit those qualities, and we have been using some of them for over 10 years! Here is our current inventory:

TUMI - Some of the best built bags we ever saw with generally good support available almost anywhere in the world. Excruciatingly high price, but in this case you really do get what you pay for. What goes wrong? Occasionally a zipper needs to be replaced, more often just a zipper pull which is annoying but easily fixable. We've had one wheel go bad on about 8 bags, so the track record is pretty good. Edit Text

Andiamo - This one comes in second only because we have only one of these bags, but it is one I use and it is really good. I bought it during a trip to Los Angeles when we had to get an emergency repair on one of our Dakota bags and feared it might not be ready in time for our trip home. Now I want more! The construction is excellent, and it is remarkably free of interior and exterior protrusions, not only protecting it from the luggage handlers of the world but giving me a cavernous opening for my stuff. Problems? None so far, and I have had it for over 5 years!

Dakota - This is an offshute of Tumi with almost the quality and a lot less price. Definitely better than many bags you will encounter, still pretty obtrusion-free, fairly light weight and generally well built. But these bags are slightly more fragile (poor choice of words...less durable would be more like it) than the others. Edit Text

Samsonsite Luggage - Nothing against them, call me biased, but I just think the others above are most durable. But remember that we travel a lot - if you don't these may be just fine. And, we find our 2 Samsonites discussed above to be extremely versatile. We use them for cabin baggage only, and they have held up very well. I find them convienent for the task we give them -try to see if you can find the international size, if possible.

Finally, we do have a few of the new TSA-approved locks which we use with some satisfaction, although they do nothing for you in Europe, and we have been told that the keys are often kept at locations other than where the screeners work (why???), so I am not rushing out to buy a lot more of them at this stage.

So, that's about all I can tell you about the bag issue for now. I won't bore you with the details of all those little hand bags and backpacks I like to pick up, but our experiences have been extensive with the ones above and, I felt, worth sharing. Just remember that in selecting your luggage, as with many things, the old addage we learned from one of our Exec. VP's many years ago fully applies: