The Doubletrack turned out to be many things--spacious, bombproof, well designed, and handsome--but it was not the answer to my dreams. Its first drawback was that the attachable backpack wasn't big enough for all the technological crap--laptop, camera, Sony Reader, GPS, iPod, etc.--I wanted to carry in my backpack. A far graver flaw, however, was its mass. The Doubletrack weighs 12 pounds. Empty. I filled the Doubletrack with clothing, folded out the back-pack straps and heaved it onto my shoulders. The thing felt just awful. It was unbalanced, poorly contoured and awkward. A back-pack/rolly bag hybrid, I realized, is a fine idea, but not very practical.

That was the journey that brought me to Patagonia's Freightliner.  I had no experience with this bag. No one I know has ever owned a  Freightliner, and I had never seen one in person. But Patagonia is in the habit of making truly fine stuff. I have Patagonia fleeces and bathing suits from high school that are still perfectly wearable. As expected, the Freightliner turned out to be everything I hoped it would be: light and uncomplicated. For such a small bag, it holds a ton of stuff. Yes, it only has two main compartments. But the top hatch is so larch that it's easy enough to find whatever you need by opening it wide and digging your hands in.

Most importantly, the thing takes a licking. It was dropped off carts, buried under luggage heaps and jerked down countless flights of stairs. The bag seems so resilient to injury that I find myself almost overcome with a desire to try and destroy it.

I blame that goat in Mongolia

But the Freightliner is not perfect. If you really stuff the crap out if--which I did in France by adding four bottles of Burgundy to an already capacity loadthen the bottom bulges out, and if you try and stand it upright, it will tip over. They also should have put some kind of re-enforcement on the bottom because by the end of my trip, the nylon had abraded. But that may be a good thing thanks to Patagonia's "iron clad" guarantee. "If you are not satisfied with one of our products at the time you receive it, or if one of our products does not perform to your satisfaction, return it to the store you bought it from or to Patagonia for a repair, replacement or refund."  It all sounds too good to be true until you get to the part that says, "Damage due to wear and tear will be repaired at a reasonable charge." The bag is just over three months old, yet it's traveled more in that time than most bags do in a lifetime. I suppose as long as the charge is reasonable, I'll be happy to pay it.

The secret compartment...perfect for cramming your expensive Italian sports jacket

Finally, the Freighliner has one hidden attribute: the secret compartment. This is a flat, thin section at the very bottom where I stored the Borrelli sports jacket. Yes, the jacket got horribly wrinkled. I pulled it out in Ravello, Italy--not a hundred miles south of where the jacket was sewn, incidentally--and came out looking like crumpled tinfoil. (Beautifully tailored crumpled tinfoil, mind you.) But eventually, by experimenting with folding methods, I was able to store the jacket in a manner that would leave it quite wearable.

The point is this: you could put a suit in there. That means instead of taking one of those black, fold-in-half cheesy suit bags on your next business trip, you can take a Freightliner instead. Your journey may find you bored and condemned to some climate-controlled convention complex, but in your bag will exist the possibility of genuine adventure. You can't say that about most luggage.