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Wednesday, January 19, 2011
edc and me
Its only recently I have come across the whole idea of EDC though in some ways I have been aware of it for years. I always have had pockets full of stuff. Keys, wallet, leatherman or some other sort of knife, phone, headphones, bottle opener (always carry a bottle opener) and quite often various bits of cord or things. I always tend to wear trousers with lots of pockets.
At the same time I often carry around my "toolkit" for work. That consists of an inordinate number of different pens and pencils, 960 grid system sketching paper, plain A3 paper, tracing paper, a moleskine or three plus a thumb drive or two. To be on the safe side a usb cable or two and some batteries.
Then there is the medication I have to take at intervals through the day for my diabetes, inhaler for my asthma, indigestion and allergy tablets, blood pressure and cholesterol medication. Thats quite a lot to carry around in your pockets.
I was using my semi-hardshell nike id daysac for carrying a lot of stuff around in (including my laptop as well quite often). Now I am going to the gym again there is not enough room in my daysac for the gym kit and the other stuff. So now I have bought a B.O.B. (or bail out bag to you and me). To be specific its a 5.11 Tactical bag. Ok I am not likely to use the front pockets for the 5.56 magazines they are intended for but on the whole its pretty useful.
For a start its not too big. It wont hold a A4 sized object without folding it up. Its definitely too small for my laptop (though you could probably get a netbook, ipad, kindle etc in it).
The downside is its not too big. Its too small for a water bottle to fit inside. The response to this is to include MOLLE webbing for other pouches to be attached to it. There is webbing on both ends of the bag, on the shoulder strap and on one inside side.
That got me thinking. The ammo pouches cannot be removed from the bag. Wouldnt it be better to make a possibly slightly larger basic bag with MOLLE webbing on 3 sides then allow the purchasers to buy the pouches etc they want to suit their needs. I am sure that this would be great for the original military purpose of the bag. A user could trade 5.56 mag pouches for grenade pouches or a holster for a handgun for instance. You could even attach a 6x10 utility pouch then add other pouches to that.
The same could be said for civilian users of the bag. They would have a great deal more flexibility. I would take off one of the magazine pouches and add a water bottle pouch and probably swap the other two mag pouches for small utility or grenade pouches which would be more useful and add a dump pouch to one end and a first aid kit pouch to the other and add a pouch to hold my phone to the strap.
Still my EDC list has expanded to include a small adjustable spanner, small screwdriver with a selection of bits, a roll of duct tape with the cardboard core removed and then squashed flat, some soft rubber garden tie (very useful for quickly lashing stuff), several karibiners, a small first aid kit, a torch, lots more pens and pencils and all the medication I need (which is quite a lot)
I want to add a decent knife or rescue tool a better torch and a few other things... getting there though.
Permanent link and Comments posted by Rob Cornelius @ Wednesday, January 19, 2011
