"Last week my grandfather found out a backpack my age was part of the Osama bin Laden raid, and his words still echo in my ears. Now that’s a real backpack. Why can’t you be more like that? When David carried me onto Omaha Beach, it certainly wasn’t to carry his Juul. The most perilous adventure Trevor has taken me on was that $4,500 luxury whitewater rafting trip, and he kept complaining that the guides were cooking meals that exacerbated his acid reflux.I know that, could a lot of my stuff talk, it'd be right there with the backpack, because when it comes to gear, I believe there's no kill like overkill.
Oh no, Trevor is unzipping me. What fresh humiliation will this bring? Ah, he is getting another Lara Bar from one of my pouches — one of six designed to hold extra 40mm grenades. I hope he chokes."
Cold weather clothing? I don't buy the mittens from the gas station, I'm buying stuff that's designed to keep someone's hands warm while they assault the north face of the Eiger with an ice axe. I figure that if long johns are designed to keep someone warm sitting around Camp III on the South Face of Everest, then they'll definitely be up to keeping me warm while shoveling the walk or strolling to Twenty Tap.
I love the webbing on the Maxpedition Fliegerduffel that I've been using for near a decade now, because I've used it to attach a blowout kit to the outside of my bag. (I put one on the outside of my Hazard 4 camera bag, too.) This has the added side benefit of having trauma shears ready to hand so I can cut the goofy zip tie off my Pelican right there in front of the baggage office in the airport. I figure if bags are designed for jumping out of a helicopter with a knife in your teeth, they should definitely be up to the rigors of baggage handlers or the bin above my seat in Comfort Plus.
It's probably why I like pro-grade camera bodies from Canon and Nikon so much. Sure, they're crazy stupid heavy, but you could use my D1x or 1DS Mark II to beat a dude to death and then take pictures of the body. Any camera up to taking war correspondent photos in a snowstorm in the Hindu Kush is well capable of taking pictures of squirrels in Broad Ripple.
