Here’s how it rolls, folks: Baggage on wheels is genius.
Utter, utter genius.
(Deb Lindsey/FOR THE WASHINGTON POST)
Cast Your Vote
Really, who could think otherwise? Even I think it, and I am, in most things, a crotchety innovation-phobe. Kindle? Pass, thanks. iPhone 4? Old phone does me just fine. But a suitcase that takes the lug out of luggage? I’ll take two, please. Actually, make that three. One in every size, of course.
I know, they’re geeky-looking. I know, that telltale sound of the wheels on sidewalks and concourses can drive you batty. I know, there’s a certain air of the automaton to everybody towing lookalike bags through airports and train stations and down city streets. But there’s a reason why you see them everywhere, you know? It’s because the idea of mobilizing luggage was a stroke of major brilliance, right up there with Ziploc bags and the Cuisinart.
Here’s a snapshot of what I mean:
On a trip to France a couple of years ago, the bus from the airport dropped my husband and me at the Arc de Triomphe, leaving a several-block walk to our hotel off the Champs Elysees. For me, no problem! I whipped out the telescoping handle on my large (and overloaded) suitcase, tilted it onto its wheels and trundled off, weaving my way among the French folks on the sidewalks with ease.
Beside me, my husband, a holdout against “wimpy” roller bags, trudged stolidly along, huffing ever so lightly as he carried his own (also loaded) wheelless bag the six blocks to the hotel, stopping every now and then to switch hands. By the time we arrived, he was, he confessed, tired, grungy, sticky and, yes, feeling very uncool as the only guest with an old-fashioned, outmoded suitcase sans rollers.
So it’s obvious: The guy who dreamed up this baby deserves gazillions. Maybe even a medal.
At the same time, the whole thing seems like such a no-brainer that you wonder why genius didn’t strike a whole lot sooner than it did. It’s so perfectly natural, rolling merrily along with your worldly goods (well, enough for a week or a weekend, anyhow) in tow, breaking hardly a droplet of sweat, freeing your shoulders, elbows and back from the strain of lifting and schlepping. It’s so second nature that I can’t even remember what traveling was like before the roll-aboard suitcase was born.
Oh, wait. Yes, I can.
I can remember (all too well) heaving ponderous suitcases from the house to the car or the cab, then hauling them out at the airport and heading for the airline counter, your arm threatening to pull from its socket so that you had to stop every six paces or so to rest, or else drag the darned thing along the ground, or shove it forward with your knees and feet (primo technique while waiting in the check-in line).
Sure, there were skycaps and porters. And in Europe, even going way, way back, there were those baggage carts that it took U.S. airports seemingly forever to break down and roll out (and then charge for once they did). But who wants to pay for a skycap? In my footloose student days and beyond, I sure didn’t. For years, I wiled male friends or obliging strangers into taking pity and toting my bag. Sometimes I didn’t even need any wiles. They just took pity.
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