I know that the hip new thing these days is the saddle bag. People all over town lug their stuff around in these things that hang at your hip like a fatty appendage. And before the saddlebag…or messenger bag as they are now called after an apparently widely successful rebranding effort…there was the briefcase.
Don’t even get me started on what an outdated symbol of 1950s American salarymen chic that was. I still think the briefcase is a silly thing to carry for pretty much everyone except obscenely rich guys who chain them to their wrists when they transport a pound of uncut diamonds.
But back to bags. So the point I’m straining to reach here is that all this time, I’ve been partial to one form of “crap transport”, and that is the backpack. But the backpack has its drawbacks. Even when you cinch them up around your shoulders, they flop around. They are pretty much useless for rigorous activity like running. If you will, flashback to high school and think of how the geeks would sometimes get all excited and run around with their packs on…well, you see what I mean.
So now there is a company seeking to solve the pack flop problem. Called the Sportback, the pack here looks a little bit like a training bra for Sir Edmund Hillary, but the idea is fresh, original and solves the problem of pack-flop. The company making the new pack, which wraps over your shoulders and seems to fit as snugly as a vest, does do away with some of the problems of traditional packs. The company is called Symbiot Design, and according to Jonathan Gross who started the company with some friends, they came up with the idea and design to help folks who are into biking, hiking, running and adventure racing.
The Sportback looks very cool, and certainly useful if you are a runner, mountain biker, tri-athelete ,etc .There are space limitations, so you’ll have to cut back a bit on the amount of stuff you carry, but you should be doing that anyway. Oh, and there is space for your water bladder should you want to have the pack replace your Camelback.