Originally Posted By Folkalist
Why do you people keep making me laugh so hard I spit on my computer screen?

One thing that finally occured to me about me gear bags that I had figured out about food about the same time WD very carefully explained it in a post:
If you pack your food in hard little brickish shaped vaccum sealed bags you seriously limit your ability to use space in a bear canister very well. Same concept for my food bag. Okay, I figured that out alright.

Ah ha! Same concept applies to bags for separately different types of gear! If I press all the air out of the bags and roll the tops down and and clip them closed really tight, all I've done is create a little gear bricks that actually monopolize more space within my pack than it deserves. If I just press most of the air out and close it loosely, it mushes (technical term) into a far more packable shape.

May the learning never end!


For several years, I have been using a bicycle for all of my daily needs, including grocery shopping. I use panniers of various types (cycling, grocery bag cycling style, converted daypacks, ...)

I finally figured out that the best grocery packing results from lots of plastic grocery bags each of which is not very full. They are then "soft" enough that you can make them fit into almost every nook and cranny of the bike bag.

If you take the "one or two big stuffed bag" approach favored by grocery bag packers, you can't easily arrange them to take advantage of all available space. When you mix grocery store shopping with other shopping, the space demands become even more severe.

The "hard brick" mentality is common. It helps to explain why you are so fussy about getting more bags, each of which is filled with less. Then you see the light go on, and you will usually have no future problems with THAT grocery packer.