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Ergonomic Luggage Anyone?

Thursday, June 19th, 2008

Just now, I am disgorging all of my “Great Ideas” to the BootsnAll Universe, hoping to seed some fertile minds into bringing these fantabulous travel inventions into reality.  Here!  Take them and grow rich!  I know that I would pay to have the use of them.  As far as I can recall, this luggage design is the last one that I am harbouring within my heart, so here it is:

How about a rolling suitcase with a base more like a stroller than a miniature mover’s dolly?  I started my last RTW with a small rolling suitcase which was actually too heavy even when it was empty.  PLUS, the extendable handle didn’t extend high enough so I had to stoop over to drag it.  I’m only 5’4″, so what do tall men do with these dumb things?  Actually, I know because I watch them all the time, leaning down in a backbreaking posture.  I think these handles hit everyone at a very uncomfortable level.     PLUS, all of the weight is carried by your shoulder when the case is only supported by those two wheels.  This is a terrible design and should be junked!

I did, finally, become a backpacker in Prague, after fighting with four succeeding draggables and a variety of luggage racks throughout a summer of Eastern European travel.  (All of this is documented in a funny way in my new book.)  It cost a lot to keep experimenting to find the solution and I wound up giving them all away to my various hosts.  Forget trying to maintain a modicum of a ladylike image befitting my age, I needed to get practical.  I kept the backpack throughout the rest of the year of that trip and it will come with me again on the next RTW.   

But, I sure was doing a whole lot of mental suitcase designing as I hauled my heavy load though all those countries.  I had been a Mom.  I had pushed strollers.  I knew about the beauty of four wheels to bear the weight and the comfort of a waist-high handle.  Surely, that can be adapted to a folding built-in suitcase design. 

Another feature I want, at least on the two back wheels, is a stair-climbing ability.  In Gdansk, Poland, I spotted a luggage rack with its two wheels made up of three rotating wheels each.  As you pulled this up or down the stairs, those wheels would flip and roll you down instead of the jarring clacking you must do with ordinary wheels.  This makes so much noise in a sleeping hostel or hotel, but it must also be very hard on those small plastic wheels, which I always expected would crack off after so much banging.  All of you are familiar with the extreme staircases of every railroad terminal in the world….. except here, where we hardly use trains at all……and know nothing of vast levels of tracks.  But, considering the amount of punishment that a suitcase on the road is subject to, I think it would behove the manufacturers to be more aware of the drawbacks that they are inflicting upon us daily!

By the way, I didn’t allow myself to indulge in that fancy-dancy stair-climbing luggage rack, because I could see that the aluminum was way too light for any load-bearing.  Yes, by that time, I had already had two extendable handles bend like butter with the weight of my stuff, instantly rendering the new suitcase unworthy of further use.  But, I knew that the wheel-design was worthy of a luggage junkie’s admiration and I wanted it real bad.