Bag-O-Beast

I am going to confess right here and now so that this testament may exist in cyberspace for eternity. I love bags. I am a bag hag. Maybe a bag fag. Whatever. I cannot deny it. The bags in my life have followed two particular use trajectories. First is the simple "carry-all-of-yr-crap-around-in" bag. The guy's version of a pocketbook. These started simple enough as knapsack when I was kid. I carried my lunch, pencils, crayons, erasers and books to school with these. Although their complexity and size changed as time went on, they basically consisted of a large zippered inner compartment, usually a small outer compartment and two shoulder straps. I rarely ever used both shoulder straps to wear it as a proper backpack as it was too time consuming to wrestle in and out of to get to items quickly. I wore like a shoulder bag with one strap becoming a vestigial limb. Some of them had a handle or loop at the top to carry it with one hand like a suitcase, but this of course tied up a hand that you could be doing something else with. These bags served me all the way into college. My number one complaint with backpack-style bags was that if you had only one strap in use as was my proclivity, the damn thing invariably slide down yr arm either crippling you with imbalance or forcing you to stop re-adjust it. Totally annoying either way. I could still be convinced to possibly carry something as badass as one of these Star Wars packs. Perhaps the Force would keep it in place. Once I got to college I found out about the practicality of other bag styles. I went through different army duffles and Israeli paratrooper bags finally settling on what I still carry today the messenger bag. I have employed this style of bag for over twenty years through school, work and travel. It really has no downsides and there are zillions of different options. It alleviates my complaints with backpacks in that your stuff is much easier to access and the strap stays put over yr shoulder. A secondary stabilizer strap keeps it locked in place and the bag is very stable while cycling even on rough terrain. You can haul a ton of stuff one as well w/o it killing yr back or wrecking yr ballance. There are many great companies that make messenger bags like Timbuk 2, R.E. Load, Manhattan Portage, PAC Designs and my personal favorite Chrome. I have two Chrome bags and have one with me almost always. I love their functionality, but they look great too with a clever integration of a classic seat belt with the Chrome logo emblazoned on the button. Not to mention that these bags would likely survive a nuclear blast. Hellbelly sez "Hell Yeah!"


The second type of bag of which I utilize routinely is a hydration pack. I have always hated having/carrying things on my bike like computers, seat bags and water bottles. I jumped on the hydration pack idea as soon as they came out. Brilliant idea; never having to take yr hand really away from riding and you have everything else you need right in a neatly organized pack. Yes, I have tried carrying stuff in those silly roadie-style jerseys w/ the 3 rear pockets. Unfortunately the gear flopping around in the pockets never feels comfortable and I hate the way they fit. Its mountain biking dammit not the frickin' Tour. I am pretty sure CamelBak were the first hydration pack systems and while I still think their bladders are the best, their bags generally left a lot to be desired. Generally with the 4-5 of them I have had the straps would fray, seams would come apart, but most importantly they always felt like I was wearing a brick on my back. Terrible air flow and their stability was always iffy.

In '99 I did a group ride in North Georgia with the first IMBA trail care crew, Mike and Jan Ritter. It was hot and I was complaining about my Camel "brick" when I noticed the Ritters were running a pack I had never seen or heard of. They both swore by their Vaude Splash series packs. Vaude is a German company that made some very smartly designed packs. I scored one and it became my go-to pack for more than five years. It is the only hydration pack that I have ever seen that uses an adjustable internal suspension system which allows it to have only 4 small contact points on yr back vs. "the brick". The bag was absolutely bullet-proof; I have never had to replace anything and nothing has come apart. Keep in mind this was using this bag year 'round regardless of weather at least 2-3 times a week and often more. I still have this bag and it is in great shape for being nearly 9 years old. Towards the end of its tenure I started to feel that I did not to carry my whole life and a bike shop around with me on every ride. The Vaude although very comfortable is a big pack and just seemed like too much to lug around on my shorter 1.5-2 hr after work rides. Vaude since has ceased making hydration bags and several years ago when I checked out their smaller options I was unimpressed.

I picked up a cheap-o Roach pack off eBay for pennies. Roach had been bought out by Raceface and you could find many of their cool products for nothing. This little pack was nothing fancy and was certainly not anything I would want to take on a long ride, but it worked just fine for my post work jaunts. It was small enough that despite its "brick" feeling design it did not bug me too much. I was covered fro short or long rides b/t the Roach and my Vaude but bigger things loomed on my horizon.

In 2007 myself, Mike, and Mark did our trip to Switzerland as I have previously discussed here. In preparation we received a long list of items to bring including a hydration pack that had to have at least 1500 cu. in. of storage. My Vaude was big but not that big. Our guides recommended the Dakine Apex pack. Talk about carrying yr life w/ you, this thing was huge. I found a previous year model on closeout and decided to start riding with it all the time to get used to it. It looked heavy and cumbersome, but was quite the opposite. It stayed securely in place and surprisingly did not get that hot. It had pockets, compartments, tie-downs and storage for almost anything you could think of. It served me fantastically on the trip and has been terrific. I even rigged small speakers into the straps to plug my iPod into to rock and ride. I do not use it all the time though because it is just too much.

I really became quite enamored of having tunes playing during my rides as well as not being plugged into headphones. I wanted to rig my Vaude pack for speakers, but there was not the room to do it without major modifications. I came across a Skullcandy Link Hydropack which seemed to have everything I wanted with both tunes, hydration and gear storage. Although the speaker system was pretty clever the pack was a piece of junk. The zippers fell apart, the clasps broke and it brought back every back "brick" horror I could remember. Thankfully it was a cheap eBay score. I was able to salvage the speakers which was the best part anyway. I knew that the speakers would fit into Dakine bags as my homemade ones did so I went back to them to find a suitable pack.

Enter the Nomad. This bag has been fantastic in the short time I have run it. It has all of the features of the Apex, but not as big. The design is more steamlined and the straps are more secure. The internal layout blows away everything I have seen out there and the level of organization possible would please even the most anal-retentive cyclist. Its lines are clean and it is a nice looking pack as well. My lil' speaker system fit seamless into it and it shares its name with my bike. What more could I ask for? Maybe more time to ride, but that's life.

"Shaka bra dude, whats cracklin'?"

I was rountinely greeted with the above question many years ago by the manager of the surf shop where I worked. I always thought it sounded stupid for several reasons. 1. We were in Virginia Beach not Hawaii. 2. I hated the laid back surfer mentality that pervaded the town. 3. Virginia Beach has no waves at least not during the summer. I could never figure out why the surfers and the zillion wannabe's in VB thought their shit did not stink because they had little to no surf to act so cocky about.

Compounding my misgivings about the aforemnetioned lifestyle was the zenith of my immersion into hardcore punk and specifically skateboarding. As skateboarding was breaking away from the surf culture that spawned it, it became way more aggressive and the pasttime of choice of punkers across the US when they weren't getting into other trouble. This was well documented in the film Dogtown and the Z-Boys . My friends and I who skated went out to travel around town to find interesting places to hit and tear up and give the finger to anyone who challenged us. We were tossed or run off many locations by owners and cops. Never deterred, we would just go look for the next place to wreak havoc.

Minor Threat: Great DC tunes to get fired up to and then go skate.


I came to really enjoy covering great distances whilst hitting places along the way to rip, fall on my ass, whatever. These epics became routine for me during my time in college in DC. My buddies and I would start up near Bethesda and skate all the way downtown to the mall. We'd stop and tear up curbs, transitions or walls and then tear down some of the amazing downhill streets through Georgetown. Sometimes we'd stop at book or record stores or bars and grab a brew for additional fuel. On multiple occasions after skating all day we'd creep back to Georgetown and get Sushi and Sake all the while filthy, reeking and usually bloody from playing in the street for hours. I found these epics and street skating far more enjoyable than ramp skating. I skated ramps and vert and was okay, but I just would get bored too quickly trying to the same tricks or lines over and over. Not to mention often waiting to get a run or having to snake someone to drop in. The "sessioning" never did it for me. Its like going through same door over and over and expecting something different on the inside. The 1st time is fun, but it gets old fast. The same is true for many things.

Now I ride. I do not "session" on my bike although there are many that do. It bored me back than and it still does. I love hitting nasty lines, jumps, stunts and obstacles while riding, but I want to do them within the course of a ride. I may stop and try a section once maybe twice, but then its time to move on. I don't like to "practice" on my bike and to me that is what "sessioning" feels like. My favorite rides are long flowing trails with many technical sections and opportunities to get nutty. I climb and descend and flow through all of it. If I do not make a section I might try it again or maybe not; its not that important or entertaining.

The most entertaining trail in my vicinity is Freedom Park in Williamsburg, VA. Over the last year+ a number of stunts have been very well incorporated into the trail and more are going in all the time. I am very pleased that the building and design has been top-notch as it becomes very easy for these kinds of things to look awfull or worse be unsafe. As much as I love hitting these spots throughout the trail I believe that they would suck if all clustered together w/o the trail. Sure you could "session" them but interest would be rapidly lost as it has on another local trail where all the stunts are in one small area that is not part of the system. I stopped to "session" a new spot that was finished yesterday out there and while fun, I found myself becoming agitated just sitting around after hitting it a few times. I did not get to ride the bulk of the trail as the sunlight was dwindling and we had spent more time talking than riding. I will try to avoid this during my future visits. The best thing about yesterday's ride for me was seeing and talking with a family who were riding with their young daughter. The mom said that she and her daughter mostly stuck to the fire roads, but they did get out onto one of the fast downhill sections. The daughter excitedly said that she went so fast that her face turned "pale". Now that little girl has an epic under her belt. Cool.