Overhead = 1.5 lbs.
My favorite backpack finally failed on Friday.
The zipper had been in rough shape for a week or so, but for several days I had managed to jam in my sneakers and gym clothes and the unfortunately large Amazon-issued ThinkPad laptop, plus some notes and papers, and I had been able to get it to close as long as I zipped only in one direction.
But Friday, on my way home from work, the main zipper really went to hell, so I ended up grabbing one of the zipties in the mess at the bottom of the pack and securing the front-pocket zippers to the grab-handle at the top, which was good enough to get home.
Bonnie says the nice people at the local cleaners can fix the zipper, which is cool, but that requires emptying out the backpack. This backpack has traveled with me all over the world; it also serves for day hikes in the Cascades in the summer. It would be easier to enumerate the times that I have left the house without it than the rare times that it has stayed behind.
I emptied it this evening after dinner into a flimsy plastic Safeway bag and, as I was in the kitchen near a scale anyway, I weighed the contents of the random junk after gym clothes were dumped in the washer and laptop was safely plugged in: total weight remaining = 1.5 lbs.
A partial list: two contact lens cases, a small plastic compass, a compact first-aid kit, a half-empty Crest toothpaste, a pink-ribbon Master lock (I never have trouble spotting my locker in the men’s room), 3 multi-colored and 6 plain zipties, a spare credit card (it works) and the May 2010 edition of Harper’s that I haven’t been able to discard, even though it’s crumpled into a tight roll, because of Edward Hoagland’s article “Last Call.” It’s as close to a Bible as I have right now.
Starbucks mints, iPod headphones, lip balm from the kids’ orthodontist, a plastic knife, a couple of keys (one I’m pretty sure opens a safe at a former job). Also a winning lottery ticket from a Christmas stocking several years ago (I won $2). A half-empty small Motrin and the gloves that Amazon handed out when I spent a couple of days working at the warehouse.
All this together weighs 1.5 pounds according to the kitchen scale.
Comments (View)
