Some people carry expensive designer bags onto a flight. Me? Not so much.

If I haven’t heaped enough praise on Tom Bihn bags before, let me reiterate a powerful selling point: their water resistance.

Flying in the cramped confines of cattle coach class, if you set down your improperly-capped refillable water bottle on the top flap of your Cafe Bag, your iPad, Kindle, cell phone, and important papers might survive in spite of the aftermath of your arthritic fingers’ failure to twist.

Must you ask me how I know?

Sigh.

Some water dribbled down into the open back slit pocket, but, as luck would have it, I only keep a shopping bag and my baggies full of wipes* there during travel.

The front zip pocket and merely flap-covered main compartment stayed dry through about four ounces of slow leaking. My chocolate chip cookie and spare napkins fared less well, but I could weather their loss. I also packed a brownie!

I had chosen one of our smallest water bottles to lighten my load, and I’m so glad I did. Mine was a child’s 0.3 L aluminum Sigg bottle. There was less volume of liquid available to inundate my Cafe Bag.

This is also another opportunity to tout the advantages of heeding Douglas Adams’ advice**: always travel with a towel.Mine is a small, personal sized Pack Towl. I like to blame the kids for it being constantly in use, but any person with a water bottle and electronics in the same bag should consider such an absorbent accessory cheap insurance.

Buy Tom Bihn bags because they are designed–nay, engineered!–for real-world travel. They’re also made in Seattle, Washington USA and ultra light yet super strong. Also, you’re going to be at least as prone to wayward dribbles in flight as you are in mid-adventure. Pack like it!

Tom Bihn gear is tough enough for everyday people who scoop up the cheap fares in crappy seats to travel more often; Tom Bihn luggage is for folks who carry their own bags.***

By the way, the bags hold up equally well to containing pickle juice when traveling by automobile. Ahem.

♦

* Might amuse the audience to know that DH requests that, if I must travel so often, I at least commit to wiping down my seating area with disinfecting wipes every time. I carry the kind for hands, such as Wet Ones, when I travel, too. And also alcohol swabs and lens cleaning wipes. If there’s a wipe for it, I’ve probably got one in my bag, or at least in my car. We’ve established that I’m a messy person and a mom, right?

** Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, a very funny novel

***Full disclosure: I’d actually prefer to have someone else carry my bag, but I endeavor to pack such that this is a delightful luxury, not a physical requirement.