…books.

You could carry the equivalent of several books and documents in electronic form (e-books,travel documents,medical records,business notes,etc. plus internet access,emailing,DVD,mp3 use and more.)

See if an Iphone,mp3 player,Kindle and their ilk could consolidate your information to as little as one gadget and one usb storage device.

While I will probably be using the updated Patagonia MLC for the Jan 2010 trip, the Patagonia Lightweight Duffel brings back fond memories from an earlier trip to Thailand. It held a lot. I mean a lot. And got me past the “weigh-in” police at the ticket counter.

I did make one big mistake though. I should have used the backpack straps. At the time I thought it was a little fussy to re-stow them in their panel, so I just left them stowed. There is NO shoulder strap, nor even o-rings for connecting your own, though, so that meant I had to carry the Duffel by the double handle loops or by the single end loop. I purchased a “handle wrapper” to provide extra cushioning and carried it by the single end loop.

Guess what? It was terribly uncomfortable to carry this way. The handle wrapper really didn’t provide the cushioning or grip shape I wanted. On a more robust bag, there would have been a thicker, maybe even padded, handle, but not on this ultralight duffel.

Stupid me. I should have just used the backpack straps instead of suffering.

BTW I’ve concluded that Patagonia really does intend this as a “stuff in another bag” sort of destination or overflow bag. It is very light (14 oz) and very un-bulky, so it packs very well inside another bag. As such it is probably great as a local gym bag, or overflow bag (assuming you can check your more rugged main bag) on the way home.

I’d be singing the praises of this bag again though, if they had made it rectangular – squared the corners – to increase it’s volume without really increasing its “bump around” size (the subjective size of how big the bag is on my back).

I may try packing this for my drive from San Francisco to L.A. with the family for Thai food next week.

And that reminds me – a slash style opening is SO ’70′s. What happened to U-shaped openings for modern duffels so they are easier to load?

One reason to not carry the Kiva with my other hand is that some airlines restrict you to a single carry-on. This was the case with my first flight.

After a short while I gave up and just stuffed the entire Kiva bag and contents into the pocket the backpack straps are stored in.

My clothing survived pretty well. I shot a rough (and I mean ROUGH) video upon arriving at the hotel at 12:30AM… I may include it in my follow-up post. My clothing wasn’t trashed – but I was. :-) (I had trouble getting here.)

Agree – the miscellaneous stuff adds up (weight wise) quickly.

@K-eM: Thanks. I’ll have to check out Col. Conk, if for no other reason than a funky name!!! The shave oil works very well… I’m a bit surprised.