Commuting without breaking your back
Today is Thursday and I have been commuting to Sheffield from Birmingham since Monday. I thought this week was going to be really tough. A bedding in period. Surprisingly I have got into a good routine of preparing everything I need the night before, going to bed early and feeling (relatively) fresh when I rise in the morning. The train journey has been painless so far (touch wood) with no delays or cancellations. You’ll probably have noticed that in the free time I have been able to write a blog post Tuesday, Wednesday and today. I have felt fresh at work and been very able to read TechnoPhobia’s extensive and well documented methods of working and breakdown on clients. I have even completed some billable work, get me!
That’s the update out of the way. Now the reason for this post is to describe how I carry all my stuff to work that I wish to take with me without breaking my back. I have a long commute and I like to stay digitally connected to the world and be able to do things like writing posts. I haven’t joined the netbook revolution yet and carry around with me my Sony Vaio NR32 with its 15.4” screen. I have to bring its battery pack too. I am on a train so every now and then I drop connection as we travel through somewhere remote or a tunnel. I have magazines and books with me to read during these times. I also enjoy eating so having some food to munch on when I get hungry helps too. Being a web designer at a digital agency usually means I am carrying around various notepads, sketchbooks and a variety of pens. This all starts adding up to a fair amount of weight.
For a long time I was travelling with all this stuff in a laptop bag ala messenger bag style-ee. This was crippling. I forget the amount of times I pulled my back out of shape the day after a heavy load. With the new job I thought it was about time for a new bag to carry all my shit. I opted for a Karrimor Kodiak 35 litre capacity.
The Kodiak is a proper weekend pack with plenty of room. The reason I chose this pack was that the description told me that the top opening was wide allowing access to the main compartment which would easily store an A4 folder, making it ideal for commuters and students. Yes, I bought it online. It certainly accommodates my laptop plus a lot more. I can easily carry magazines, folders and A4 pads without an issue. The other compartments allow me to store the laptop battery, cables, a flask and food. There is also a hydration compartment which accepts my 2 litre Camelbak reservoir and feeds the drinking tube out through a small port on the side and then slips under a couple of retaining straps on one of the arm straps. Lovely. If it decides to piss it down, which it normally does in the UK from time-to-time, stowed away in the base of the pack is a waterproof cover.
There is no doubting it is a large pack but it doesn’t feel like a chore to carry around like the laptop bag did. Anything that keeps my back from tying itself in knots and allows me the luxury of carrying a lot of kit too and from work is a godsend. You never know, I may bring my running kit to work too and see just how bad these hills are around Sheffield. I saw Aubrey coming back from a lunch time run this week and learned we have a shower available in the building – so what the heck, why not?
Just pulled into Derby station, guess what? It’s raining…
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Tags: commuting, karrimor, luggage
This entry was posted on Thursday, October 15th, 2009 at 8:11 am and is filed under DigiKev, commuting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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