Thanks, Leer. They are very good bags. Big fat shoulder straps are essential if your dragging round heavy laptops and cabling.

Another Bean option http://www.llbean.com/llb/shop/81523?feat=sr&term=Field+Canvas+Duffle

What a beautiful weekender - perfect for going by car... For a train it would be too fancy (at least for many trains) for me and for an aeroplane... as you said. Harder and harder... (I would cry out my heart if they loose my baggage and part of it was a bag like that).

In my experience, Rome is the critical factor in having your luggage go missing, but in this day and age, it's rather a question of how long it will take to get to your hotel, rather than it going missing forever.

I know I'm out of touch with the times, but there is something unseemly to me about a man who is capable of carrying luggage using wheeled luggage. Besides that, I make my argument against wheeled luggage thus:

1. Wheels are great in terminals. Wheels are abysmal on streets and sidewalks.

2. Terminals often have stairs. Most wheeled luggage is awkward to carry.

3. Wheeled bags are ungainly on escalators, too.

4. Such luggage is difficult to place in compartments.

5. Finally, it's not often that I need to carry my bags for more than 15 minutes at a time. Most people under a certain age and suffering no major debility should be able to carry their bags for that period of time.

I use Tom Binh bags. They're well made, and can pack a lot of gear for their size. The better shoulder straps are worth every penny. I'm sure there's other good stuff out there, but I'm satisfied.

My wife is married not just to me, but her wheeled bags. I saw her off to China some time ago, and this being pre-marriage, I made it a point to help her with her bags. She lived on the Upper East Side at the time and though I didn't have to wheel the bags far to hail a cab it was enough. I've tried to convince her to give up the wheels, but she won't do it. She was made to understand that so long as she had wheeled bags, I had not duty to help her with them. It hurts to see her struggle with them on the pavement, but that is her choice. I'm willing and able to shoulder carry another bag, but it's not happening. I think it's a pride thing since my diatribe about the idiocy of wheeled bags on city streets after the aforementioned incident.

I hear, and worse see, those damned wheels on pavement in the city flopping about, taking up space and I cringe. PICK UP YOUR BAG YOU F-ING LAZY ASS @*&#!@!  Yeah, it's a little thing. But there are 100 hundred little things here and they add up and add up until you just cannot help but become a vengeful, raging psychopath for a few minutes here and there, if only in your own head.

How is one to text with all that beautiful luggage in hand?

Chums,

I ended up with a simple black Tumi.  Slightly larger than the (now reduced) maximum carry on size.  Though I've been able to carry it on once, and once, I checked it by choice.  There were about three sizes in that class -- a few the same cu. inches, and each with slightly different length or depth measurement.

Not bad really. 

I saw some of the Rimowa at the airport that looked pretty nice -- and overseas def. a lot more reasonable than in the USA.  I'm thinking one of these pieces when more space is required.  From reviews and a few people who have them I know, the merits of aluminum and the synthetic hard cases have their advocates. 

Anyway, there's where I am with the luggage front.

And wheels because we no longer live in an age of porters.  At least I don't.

Some of the ads showing graduates or school bound younger people with new luggage bring back memories.  There was a slice of the college bound men (and women!) in the old days and I remember it was kind of a rite of passage to give them a set of luggage when going to off to school or the university.  Obviously, the stuff would sit there (and the number of days one would use it weren't all that much), but you took the train.  God, I'm starting to sound like Tom22 -- anyway.  And of course there's the passage from Catcher in the Rye where Ackley (sp?) has his set of luggage up on the wall or on the wardrobe shelf.  I still have some LL Bean luggage -- made in Maine -- a while back someone posted a link on eBay and my jaw dropped when I saw what people were bidding for it.  I made do with Bean (pity poor ol' me) -- no way my parents were going to give me the Hartmann.  Samsonite still made the leather stuff but I don't remember it being too nice -- at that point more of the hard synthetic stuff was starting to take off. 

Mixed in with that time (and I probably don't have my timeline right) were soft-sided briefcases in blue from Lands End.  And green canvas bags that people would toss a book or a few files or notebooks in.