I travel light.

I do, I really do! Ever since I remember, I've been having a zeal, an obsession with traveling around in a minimalistic fashion, as little encumbered by luggage of any sort or redundant apparel as possible, regardless of where or for how long I went. Even back in the early days of primary school, I remember feeling overjoyed whenever I could come to school without a square-shaped bag on my back, using extremely flexible and light materials like small plastic bags or simply stuffing things into my pockets. The same goes for any trips that we've made... at first I just kept shortening the list of things I needed to carry in my backpack but soon ended up eliminating the backpack altogether. It was a clumsy self-limiting burden, and going around without its over-encumbering weight always gave me the feeling of being infinitely more free than having this bloated abomination in any shape of form somewhere nearby.

As the years went on, I started taking great pride in reducing the essential things I had to carry around to the lowest possible amount - it became almost as painting an abstraction of an abstraction, a journey along the path of realization that most things indeed serve no other purpose than providing some inner comfort, a mental patch for their bearer.
This minimalistic, almost ascetic attitude didn't just apply to my travels, it extended far beyond that and in many ways became an integral part of my life, in my own opinion heavily contributing to who I am today as a person.

In addition to being more free (or at least having such a feeling), roaming around in a light fashion does have at least two more advantages that I've come to notice - firstly, it makes you blend into the local atmosphere much faster, which is something I certainly love to do when I travel around, and secondly, it undoubtedly makes the trip a whole lot more exciting and adventurous (which could be further enhanced by taking along much less than you require for survival in a cold night).

So when I seriously started considering purchasing a decent laptop, most likely an ornery MacBook, I was faced with a serious dilemma. Since I would indubitably carry it with me everywhere I went (due to my high level of geekines), the laptop would then require a bag of its own. But what kind of a bag exactly? I just couldn't settle for one of those horrid big square conventional backpacks or a pretentious impractical briefcase, what I needed was something tiny, flat and with an imaginative well thought-out use of space, a bag that you can put over your shoulder without anyone noticing it's even there and also without anyone even suspecting that a laptop is hiding inside it (some of us would rather keep it a surprise). On the other hand, it has to provide sufficient protection for the things it holds - I want to be able to jump around and run for miles when I feel like it without its contents suffering any scratches or signs of wearing, not to mention the durability of the bag itself or the shoulder and back of its wearer.

I sailed across the interwebs for days, googling furiously and trying to find anything remotely close to my wishes. The closest thing I could come up with was the Incase Sling Pack. I do admit, it has quite a few features I wanted... but it's also too big, square and has a "Laptop Inside" sign written all over it.

So, I kept cruising around, finally stumbling upon an interesting link in one of the many blogs I came across. It contained two short words: "The Buzz", leading me to a site unheard of before. Tom Bihn bags, the old-fashioned red airplane-accompanied sign at the top read. The plainness immediately caught my attention, so I kept reading onward and it became clear that the bag presented on this was made to be worn on my back.
As its heart-warming about and FAQ sections of the page say, the company making it bears the name of its bag designing mastermind Tom Bihn. It's a company type that is particularly hard to find nowadays - a small factory in Seattle in which all bags are sewn together from high quality materials by a team of just 18 employees in what I imagine is a very friendly working environment.

Of course, making the bags at home (and not in China for example), using only the best materials and taking care of the workers means a lot higher final bag cost. But if you take into account what you actually get for your money, the price suddenly seems awfully low - a perfect high-quality bag with a lifetime guarantee, incredible customer support and a firm philosophy behind the process of its making.

But there was even more to The Buzz than that. Its compactness and curves immediately made me fall in love with it. Of course, as someone who has a secret desire to design and sew his own clothes and wallet I couldn't resist imagining a few improvements of my own, but even in its present form, the bag is pretty impressive, especially when taking into account its cheaper alternatives.

I feel like this is the sling bag I simply need to carry my (currently inexistent) laptop in - in part because it's made of awesomeness and in part because of what it represents. My next course of action after getting a laptop will therefore be ordering the Buzz and writing a review of it, hopefully finding out that it fits not only my body but more importantly my light travel spirit.

There is no doubt that a cult status of Tom Bihn bags is already established among their users and spreading around the world (through word of mouth), and being a part of it would indeed add an interesting dimension to owning a bag, turning me into a missionary with the holy task of saving the souls of all cheap bag wearing heretics... in a way, that is what I am already doing.

I believe that the company has immense potential if it remains on its current path: of course, I have doubts about how long can this growth be sustained without sacrificing some accessibility and attention that it coats its customers with - but in either case, the aura surrounding its brand name is simply too valuable to be thrown away. Or, if I rephrase what El Mano said when I enthusiastically babbled about whole Tom Bihn concept to him: it's too valuable not to invest in. Though I doubt that will happen any time soon (if ever), we'll certainly have to be on the lookout for such opportunities.

Now that I've brought this bag issue up, I also need a new minimalistic wallet - and I haven't been able to find one that suits me for over six months now, I've thought of designing my own over and over again. I wonder if Tom Bihn is up for designing another product, something along the lines of his organizer pouches...