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Aer Travel Pack 3 X-Pac
For when you need to take everything you own with you - and keep it organized.
Aer is a brand I was first turned onto when I was on the hunt for a one-stop-shop, carry all backpack for a trip to Europe. It’s an absolutely fantastic backpack, just under TSA guidelines for carry-on luggage, and can easily carry everything one would need for a long weekend excursion or three day business trip. Depending on the need to bring make-up bags or hair dryers, etc, available capacity will be reduced. If efficient with space and on a casual trip, a weeks worth of clothing will fit in the bag.
Here’s my been there list for the Aer Travel Pack 3
France
England
Multiple hops all over the continental United States both for work and vacation
Overall, the bag is the perfect package for the professional content creator (think, Jimmy Chin or Chris Burkard, not a Tik-Tok’er), artist, businessman, and explorer. It has dedicated, cushioned pockets for a large laptop, a tablet (my Microsoft Surface fits perfectly in the tablet pocket), more pockets than I care to count, and is well supported and comfortable for hauling heavy loads over longer distances. The bag will not struggle to fit a full frame mirrorless camera and two prime lenses, plus two days change of clothes, however, the bag really comes into its own when you need dedicated, easy access and well organized areas for external drives, CF express cards, battery backups, cables, chargers, your passport; this is the bag.
Materials and Aesthetic
I would be a madman not to disclose this first, when fully loaded, It is not an attractive bag.
You will not win any backpack fashion shows carrying this hulk around. The backpack is purpose built to carry everything you need, and keep it organized while you do; it’s an OCD’ers wet dream.
For the unorganized, the amount of searching you might have to do while looking for a USB-C cable borderline requires a court ordered search warrant. The backplate is rigid, and when filled to the zippers, the bag will stand on its own. Think, carrying a Keurig box around on your back. The bags dimensions are not far off the length and width of a 27” monitor, and the materials on the X-Pac version of the bag are top notch. X-Pac is not appended onto the name of the bag for cool points. X-Pac is a manufacturer of high quality synthetic materials that are designed for use in high wear, stress, and abrasion areas. Numerous, high end outdoor apparel companies use X-Pac, and the material is also used to make sails. The X-Pac series is waterproof. The fabric pattern has a rip-stop style look to it, albeit diamond stitched instead of the standard grid.
There is a standard version of the Travel Pack 3 that retails for $249, while the X-Pac iteration sells for $279.
The bag features YKK waterproof zippers that are unzipped to reveal a bright orange interior. Only the X-Pac versions of Aer’s bags have this feature. I like to think the orange interior is to the bag world what the red bottom shoes are to the high end fashion footwear world. This is the Christian Louboutin of backpacks.
External Components
The bag has some added exterior features that I find myself frequently using while travelling. Namely, three quick access pockets, numerous d-rings and loops for attaching items, and a water bottle sleeve that easily accommodates a 40oz wide mouth Hydro Flask. I have not used the feature yet, but the bag does have hip belt rigging points for when added support is needed. The belt is sold separately on Aer’s website. The quick access pockets are large enough to accommodate items you want immediate access to but don’t necessarily want to carry in your hand or pant pockets, e.g. a wallet, passport, phone, feminine products, or a phone charger. The bag has two robust carry handles. One on the top and another on the side. The handles feel great in hand, and show no signs of being overstressed even when used to heave heavy loads. The handles are unlikely to be a point of failure throughout the bags lifespan. On the reinforced backplate, there is a luggage handle pass-through so you don’t have to tote the bag around on your back, however, unless you have an upright roller bag with four wheels instead of the standard leaning roller with two, it’s not practical to slide the backpack onto a roller. The bag weighs 3.9lbs and has a 35L capacity. It is too easy to load up the bag with 35lbs of gear, and that makes any roller extremely top heavy, but a leaning roller gets really heavy, really fast when a fully loaded Travel Pack is resting on top. It’s a nice touch, and is perfect for waiting at the gate or taking public transit, but the utility of the feature is lost the heavier the pack is loaded.
The most unique and innovate feature of the bag are the magnetically secured cinch straps. At first, I thought the plastic magnet housings would fail, breaking the strap, but I’ve secured them and really torqued on them to help give the bag a smaller foot print. They showed no signs of breaking or being overstressed.
Interior
Okay - I counted the pockets. 20 pockets. This includes all areas, both zippered and open, that can be used to store an item. There are open slots perfect for external batteries, hard drives, documents printed on 11x17 ledger paper, and can accommodate rolled engineering drawings in a protective tube. The orange interior has an added utility in that it’s impossible to lose most items in the backpack, since most tech related peripherals are black.
Final Thoughts and Things to Note
This bag is not a daytrip bag - it was never intended to be. Unless, for this day trip, one would need to carry far more than the average person. For daytrips that don’t require a change of clothes but I want to make sure I have a small camera, a charger, water, maybe some basic toiletries, and room for souvenirs, I take my Aer Pro Pack Slim.
The Travel Pack 3 shines when you have to bring a lot, and you need to keep it organized. There’s a saying I grew up with. “Everything has a place - if it’s not in that place, it’s out of place.”
The Travel Pack 3 is the embodiment of that mantra. I have dedicated open pockets for a 65W Anker charger, a calculator, charging cables, Surface charger, Dude Wipes, Liquid I.V., the list goes on for quite a while.
It is not the first backpack I reach for, but it is my favorite.
Dimensions
Length: 21.5" (54.5 cm)
Width: 13" (33 cm)
Depth: 9" (21.5 cm)
Volume 35 L
Weight 3.9 lbs
The North Face Rolling Thunder Series
The Ultimate Road trip Roller-bag
The North Face Rolling Thunder Series bags well made, tough, and ready for the road ahead. They’re eye-catching, water-resistant, and sure to last you a very long time. They come in three sizes, 22” - 30” - and 36” inch. Each bag certainly has an archetypal feel and size. Let’s find out of they’re right for you.
As with all of my reviews, here is my field experience with the equipment.
Iceland
South Africa
Argentina
Canada
Spain
France
Coast to coast in continental USA
You’re probably wondering why I said the ultimate road trip bag. Let me tell you, these bags would have been aptly named, The North Face Everything-and-the-Kitchen-Sink Roller-bag. Wherever your travels take you, take anything and everything you might have need for. That’s right, you can quickly fill the larger two bags to way over airline weight limits with everything from socks to snowshoes. Sometimes it’s too much of a good thing.
Materials and Aesthetic
The Rolling Thunder series, especially when traveling with all of them, will have heads turning at airport baggage claim, and you’ll feel like you’re well on your way to Everest Basecamp or on the latest National Geographic Expedition. When fully loaded they have presence.
They. Look. Cool.
Laid down flat as if it were being packed for a trip, the bottom is made of a durable knurled single-piece polycarbonate (plastic). It’s tough and after thousands of miles of use and countless airlines workers caber-tossing it, there are no cracks and it shows little signs of wear. The wheels attach to the shell via coated plate aluminum to the shell. Working up from there, the middle section is double-row stitched to the polycarbonate lower shell for extra durability. The majority of the textile portion of the bags are a 1000D polyester with TPE (Thermoplastic Elastomer) laminate. The coating is durable, somewhat abrasion resistant, and waterproof. After many miles, the laminate shows signs of wear and will surely be the first material to reflect the abuse the bags can handle. What isn’t coated in polycarbonate and TPE is in 1680D nylon that isn’t waterproof but does shed water for a short time. The handles are made from the same 1680D nylon as well and they’re tough, solid handles. The two largest bags have them on all four sides for easy, ergonomic handling. I’ve loaded the largest bag to 94lbs and the handles nor any component on the bag seemed overstressed. The frame attachment point is where the design team fell flat on their faces. The frame is a single piece, bent solid steel that is cleverly and sturdily fastened to the bags baseplate. However, to create the tension and support required to make the bag stand upright, a nylon sleeve is sewn into the interior section of the shell. Nothing but tension keeps the frame inside the sleeve, and when the bag is picked up using the top (extending handle-side) and bottom (wheel-side) handle, it’s enough to pull the frame from the sleeve, rendering the frame useless, and giving the bags a forward lean, sometimes to the point of falling over.
External Components
As I mentioned before, the wheels are large, durable, self-cleaning, and are right-proper attached to the bag. The bags roll quietly, straight, and with little effort even at full load. The rubber handle feels great in hand. The carry on bag handle has two positions, as does the 30”. The larger bag has a short, single position handle due to its height at 36”. There are lash points on the outside of each bag for extra items, as well as dedicated nylon straps and rigging to daisy chain the bags together in descending order, so you can pull all three but just pulling the largest bag. If you find yourself ever needing the lash points to bring extra items, you may need to reevaluate your life choices. Once you get two larger bags packed, there are four buckles with heavy duty nylon straps to tighten down, making the bag more rigid, securing your items from excess movement, and giving the bag and slightly more accommodating form factor.
Interior
Cavernous. If you’re flying with the largest 36” bag, prepare to remove items at the airline ticket counter because these bags quickly end up in the 60-70lb range. According to The North Face website, the largest bag comes in at 10lbs 4oz, empty. On my photography trip to Africa, I had to leave behind two tripods and some battery backups because the bag showed 62lbs on the scale. Each bag is also fitted with an internal mesh pocket for smaller items. On the Icelandic expedition, the ticket counter agent gave me a break at 52lbs. The middle sized bag can quickly end up over the weight limit as well, but you have to work a little harder for it. While standing up, there are two easily accessible top compartments for storing smaller items like socks, or items you might need easy access to, such as battery backups, chargers, and snacks. The panel with the logo on it also hides an easy to miss, very large top compartment useful for storing larger, flat items. I’ve even commuted with a laptop in said pocket of the carry-on bag.
The carry-on size bag is where things can really get interesting. While the bottom or backside of every bag is made from the durable, hard shelled polycarbonate, the front, or logo side, are all made from a flexible textile material. This doesn’t sound out of the ordinary until you realize that most carry-on bags are hardshell bags, all the way around. The carry-on bag can quickly be and unknowingly overfilled to the point where it will struggle to fit in an overhead baggage compartment on a large aircraft. If you frequently commute via regional size aircraft, you will most definitely have to watch what you pack.
Final Thoughts and Things to Note
Great gear is an investment and this series of bags is without a doubt excellent equipment to add to your gear locker. They look fantastic, especially as a color matched set, and The North Face usually offers their Base Camp Duffels in the same color ways, allowing for a six piece matched set of gear in all shapes and sizes. The bags fit perfectly inside each other like Russian nesting dolls as well, so bonus points for ease of storage. Where these bags really shine is in the backseat or cargo area of your vehicle where weight isn’t an issue. In the largest of the bags, you can easily pack enough clothes for a monthlong expedition. If you’re traveling with a partner, consider packing both parties clothes together just for ease of travel and to save space.
My Magnum Opus
I hope I have to keep adding My Magnum Opus v2.0 to various posts following this one as I venture down this road of trying to create the perfect landscape photo.
I love this photo for so many reasons, but the one I keep thinking back on is the feeling of my reaction to seeing it in camera for the first time. If you’re not into photography at all, I’ll fill you in on a little something. What you see is sometimes not even remotely what the image looked like right after they were captured. Colors are brought out. A commonly used technique is to intentionally underexpose a photo on purpose and bring everything out in post. (We call it exposing for the highlights.) And that’s ok. This is art. It’s subjective. People who love Pablo Picasso may not enjoy Georges Seurat. I fit into that group. The banner photo above this post came out almost like you see it here. That’s why when I saw it, I was thrilled - I told my buddy Jake who was with me on the three week road trip to the west coast, “Dude, you gotta check this out.” I knew I had nailed it. It’s only mildly edited. Moments before the 30s exposure, the full moon rose over the southeastern edge of the caldera at Crater Lake National Park. It naturally illuminated the mountains for me. The edits I made to it consisted only of upping the exposure slightly which brought out more stars in the night sky, giving me a better separation between the mountains and the lake, and using a radial brush to lighten the mountains some more, giving the photo a definite subject.
Climate Change - Explained
“The greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it.”
The legitimacy of climate change is often a topic up for debate due to political affiliations and personal beliefs. It is often misunderstood, misconstrued, and used as a weapon but it is truly a relatively common sense concept that’s easily grasped. Climate change is real, but maybe not for the reasons you think.
Earth’s geological history is marked by changes in temperature unaffected by incidental human intervention. That does not mean humans have not a large part to play in our rising temperatures, though. Climate change is a naturally occurring geological and atmospheric process that has been happening since the beginning of time. It is largely tied to the natural rise and decrease of greenhouse gases carbon dioxide, methane, fluorinated gases, and though not a greenhouse gas, water vapor. Earth has a tumultuous history plagued with highly unstable conditions. It has seen periods of intense, scorching heat, and ice ages lasting millions of years.
It’s not about rising temperatures, it’s about how fast they’re rising
We have never before seen temperatures skyrocketing like they are today. Since 1800, the average global temperatures have risen 2.5°. This may seem like an inconsequential rise, but it is not. During the early stages of the Tithonian age, or about 150 million years ago, earth’s temperature rose only 5° over a 15 million year time period, or about .00003%. In 220 years, temperatures have risen 1.14%. Figuring based off a consistent, current rate of change, it will take us at our current pace only 1000 years to rise 5°. However, the rising temperatures cannot be predicted based on the current model as they grow exponentially as the temperatures continue to rise.
Methane and Carbon in the Permafrost
Permafrost is soil that remains frozen year-round. It accounts for one quarter of landmass in the northern hemisphere and is the largest natural methane reservoir on the planet. Mentioned previously, methane and greenhouse gases are far more efficient at capturing the sun's energy and reradiating it inside our atmosphere. As temperatures rise more permafrost is melted resulting in higher levels of naturally released methane in the atmosphere, further warming the planet. The scientific models predicting future climate is based off an exponentially growing rate of change. In short, the more temperature rises, the faster it will rise.
Man Induced Climate Change
The industrial revolution is the main cause of modern-day global warming. The burning of fossil fuels releases carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas into the atmosphere and can remain there for centuries. When one hears the term industrial revolution what might come to mind is often a picture of early factories with black smoke rolling from their stacks, because that is all we have been led to understand. The industrial revolution has also had a major impact on sustainability, further increasing the risk of irreversible climate change. By our modern-day standards, these factories were primitive. Carbon neutrality does not mean simply producing a product from entirely recycled material. There are hundreds of steps to large industrial complex, including gathering raw materials, production, logistics, and distribution. For instance, a railroad tie production facility during Americas westward expansion would have an extremely high demand for lumber, requiring large old growth forests being clear cut for their timber. Global large scale industrial logging is clear cutting our most precious resource, the lungs of our planet. Every year, the Amazon loses 80 million acres of forest, equal to the size of New Mexico, further reducing the threshold amount of greenhouse gas our planet can absorb.
What can be done?
A commitment to clean energy can slowly begin to reverse the effects of global large-scale industrialization, if the industrial chain leading to clean energy is not soiled by toxic industrial waste and greenhouse gas emission. If, for instance, producing one windmill blade produced 10,000 gallons of toxic wastewater, the offset for clean energy would be a hard bargain to drive. However, if the production of one windmill in its entirety was carbon neutral or even marginally carbon positive, the case for renewables would start to make more sense to the public. Either way, as a global entity, we are on the precipice of the point of no return. The scale in which the time we have to act before it’s irreversible not measured in decades, possibly not even years, but months.
Great Lakes Restoration Initiative
“Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.” The GLRI is a multiphase long term conservation plan for the entire Great Lakes region. The initiative outlines detailed plans to combat discharge of toxic substances and waste into the Great Lakes, tackling invasive species, reducing the amount of agricultural chemicals released into the watershed areas of the lakes, restoration and preservation of natural terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, and educating the future generations about the greater Great Lakes region. Michigan is the center for US automotive production, and the Great Lakes region is no doubt home to some of the most diverse and largest industrial complexes and manufacturing in the Americas. AccerlorMittal, the largest steel producer in the USA, has seven of their fourteen US location in the Great Lakes region, with two locations being directly on the shoreline. Microplastics have been found in great numbers in fish following lab analysis, and municipalities aren’t required to test for microplastics in the public drinking water supply. They have been found in drinking water and beer produced in the region. The effects of long term microplastic ingestion on the human body are still unknown.
The Great Lakes are the largest freshwater system in the world.
They account for more than 20% of the worlds freshwater.
The Great Lakes are the primary source of water for more than 40 million people.
22 million pounds of plastics enter the Great Lakes every year.
1 in 3 people do not have access to clean drinking water.
What can you do?
To help be part of the solution, here are some easy at home changes you can make to help reduce pollutants and conserve water.
Ban single use paper and plastic products in your home.
I did this and I came to love it. I know it isn’t easy and it’s even less convenient, but it adds up in the long run. It’ll even save you money long term.
Conserve water when you wash dishes.
When you hand wash dishes, fill one side of the sink with water for scrubbing, and fill the other side with cool water for rinsing the dishes and cutlery before leaving to dry. Don’t let the water run the whole time. Don’t worry, the antibacterial properties in the dish soap will sanitize the dishes. The rinse water will get a sheen of soap on it, but it will remain clean. If you have a dishwasher, don’t run it for anything other than a chock full dishwasher.
Buy from companies who are committed to sustainability and sustainable practices.
There are numerous companies that make everyday products such as napkins and paper towels in a sustainable and eco friendly way by either making their products from recycled waste or choosing to use sustainable materials. I wear bamboo socks because they’re even softer then cashmere, naturally antimicrobial, 100% biodegradable, and bamboo is carbon neutral.
There’s hardly a process so perfect that it’s truly a carbon neutral or 100% sustainable, I know. There are holes everywhere. Often one process looks so wonderful on paper because there are ten processes behind it that are horrible for the environment just to make one look so good, but there are little things we can do everyday to ensure the inheritors of the Earth have it better than we did, that we leave behind a better world for them. If everyone with access to clean drinking water saved just one gallon of water per week, we’d save 131,685,840,000 gallons of water per year. That’s 131 trillion.