November 27, 2009

My Awesome New Backpack


Uh oh. Product placement! It was bound to happen sooner or later: the corporate world eclipsed the blogosphere long ago, so let's all deal with it. Furthermore, congress and the FCC now want us bloggers to fess up about who pays them to post funny pictures and anecdotes at 3 AM. So this is me coming clean...

Nobody pays me to blog. Not here. This is my own personal site and although I write for half a dozen blogs that do pay me, this one is where I get to say whatever I want however I want (which is the real purpose of a blog). I am still cash poor but travel rich.

However, maybe I have some stuff that I LIKE and I wanna talk about it. Like how I just got a new backpack that is pretty cool (Noobody is paying me to say that either).

I got this backpack for work, since I am now officially a "contributing editor" at National Geographic Traveler and am about to do a lot more contributing and (hopefully) a lot less editing. My new pack is still a newborn--without a crease or knife hole or spilled drink stain on it--just begging to be taken out into the world and fulfill it's purpose of carrying stuff on my back. Which is precisely my intention as I pack it full this afternoon for it's maiden voyage to an undisclosed location on the other side of the world that perhaps rhymes with Zoo Kneeland.

So, specs you ask? Without being tested, the National Geographic Earth Explorer Backpack is loved by me for the following reasons:

1: It's HUGE. I like packing light, but this is gonna fit all my blogging gear without getting bulky.
2: It's not TOO huge. Just like Goldilocks, I find the size just right. (One of my BIG pet peeves are naive backpackers seen clamoring around Europe with backpacks that are large enough to smuggle illegal immigrants in. As if that's not enough, these poor gap year kids where an additional front pack and stagger around like top-heavy zombies, just begging to be tipped.)
3: It's got one million and one pockets. So it's gonna be like having my desk on the road.
4: It has a padded, hidden slot for my laptop.
5: The internal compartments are all detachable, so I can custom build my pack to carry what I want in there.
6: It has a rain cover that bags up the whole thing in one swoop and keeps everything dry.

So, I'm gonna test it out over the Christmas holiday before I actually start using it for my first big work assignment, which is gonna be pretty nifty. If it turns out the backpack sucks then I'll make sure to let you know, although I'm already feeling a little attached to it and wanna just decorate it to death. Or give it a name.

2 comments:

Mike Barish said...

Forget FCC disclosures. Where does the government stand on you marrying your bag?

Camels & Chocolate said...

That's so cool--congrats on the promotion! Though I've always wondered what exactly a contributing editor does? Might you clarify, please? Do you do more editing or more traveling and writing about it?! (For your sake, I hope the latter!)