I’m a nosy piece of work, and I dig other folks’ “what’s in my bag” posts and pictures on Flickr, so I thought I would do my own. Also, I had to clean my bag yesterday (Exxon-style glitter spill), so I figured since everything was out of it, I might as well take a picture of the creeping mess. In the following pictures (except for the very first) I have already thrown out a bunch of crumpled, dirty receipts, snot-rags, post-it-notes, and other just plain debris. What’s left is what is NOW in my bag, but it can get worse at any given time. Especially if I start riding a bike which requires a different size or style of inner tubes than what’s already in there, because I will just chuck in a couple of more tubes of the correct spec. I almost never remove tubes from the bag. My camera is usually in my bag, too, in an old Remington Shaver case that fits it perfectly. For obvious reasons it’s not depicted here.
This is my bag (with my helmet resting on top & my headlight still plugged into its battery pack) The lettering used to read “Ride Bikes,” but I got the “B” caught on the handle of the screen door and it pulled most of the beads off & I haven’t been moved to repair it.
First glimpse of the horrors within. I’d already removed a little bit of trash paper, but there was plenty more. Before I laid out the contents you will see below, I threw away a bunch of old, crumpled, filthy receipts, envelope fragments, snot-rags, and other debris that had built up.
Minus the “just-plain-crap,” this is the crap that is now in my bag.
And here’s a detail picture of all that crap. If you follow this link, you can see all of the flickr notes breaking down what all that nonsense actually is. Mostly bike tools and toiletries, plus extra batteries for my camera. I carry batteries like I used to carry film. I never like to get caught short, so I always carry an excess!
If you can believe it, despite the 39 items noted on the Flickr photo, there is still room in my bag for a modest lunch, a change of clothes, and a book. I can say one more good thing about that Chrome bag – it certainly has an amazing capacity for not actually looking that big.