It's In The Bag - 非女人專屬

Mark has always loved backpacks. Every time we went into an REI or visited The North Face outlet, Mark had to check out the backpack section. Over the last ten years, he's gone through five or six backpacks, but he was always looking for the next great configuration. The standing joke with Mark and backpacks was: "Honey, I don't have one this size...!"

When we arrived in Taiwan, it became immediately apparent that the temperature and humidity levels made wearing a backpack hot and uncomfortable.
Plus, Mark was always in need of something like an umbrella, a notebook, the "yo yo ca" (MRT debit card), a pen, a tape measure, a grocery bag, a compass, oh, yeah--the wallet...whatever. Sometimes those things had to be retrieved quickly, so having all of that on his back wasn't practical. Mark was constantly slinging and un-slinging the pack from his shoulders. If all that stuff was in front or just off to the side, it would be much easier to manage.

Within the first week, Ping's mom took us to the street market and we picked out a nice, black nylon polyester number with several usable compartments. Only NT$100 ($3.33 U.S.)!


It's...it's...it's...
        ...it's a MAN BAG!

(It's not a purse! It's not! It's NOT!)

Here's everything that normally goes into the Man Bag. Yes, those are Starbucks napkins we imported, personally, from California.

The bag had to be big enough to fit the 8x10" sketchbook Mark tends to carry. This one just fits it. Mark thinks that rather than get a less-than-optimally-sized sketchbook, his next Man Bag will be slightly bigger.

Now, if he can just figure out how to rig a hydration system...HEY! There's an outdoor store around here somewhere! Surely, they have something waterproof with extra pockets, and ...we're SURE Mark doesn't have one THAT size!

Anyway, here's what Mark looks like with the Man Bag, just hangin' out with the locals at the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall. Notice how he fits right in. (If you REALLY want to see what it looks like, click on the picture and it blows up nice and big. Consider yourself warned.)