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Rolling ThunderIn the age of wheeled luggage, we make a case for the carry-on being just that.
ILLUSTRATION: STÉPHANE POIRIER There is a sound in airports that none of us really notices anymore because it’s so ubiquitous. From the parking lots to check-in, through security right into the aircraft. It’s the sound of rolling luggage. I am not going to dismiss the conveniences of rolling luggage because that would be foolish. Kids now have rolling luggage to lug their homework. Backpacks come with wheels. So do hockey bags. The black – or red – wheeled baggage carrier is to modern travel what trunks were to steamships. Now here’s the thing: I hate the sound. Airports are noisy to begin with, but the overlying hum these days is the sound of thousands of wheels rolling blissfully along. Then you have squeaky wheels or broken wheels or metallic wheels. And unless your airport has soundproofing and wall-to-wall carpeting – and, yes, quite a few airports now do have carpeting – that sound, if you tune into it, will drive you to distraction. Okay, it drives me to distraction. This is true: Recently, I saw an elderly lady struggle valiantly with a wonky wheeled piece of luggage in Calgary. She wobbled down the terminal cursing, the warped wheels tugging her hither and yon. No one stopped to help her. And she never attempted to just pick the darned thing up and walk with it. Why? Because the luggage had wheels. The rolly’s place in the history of travel is secure. The story: In the late 1980s, a resourceful pilot with Northwest Airlines decided his overnight bag was getting unruly. He tinkered around and came up with the idea of wheels. It was a simple and elegant solution to his problem. I suppose I’m a hopeless over-the-shoulder person. When I feel especially old-fashioned, I even carry luggage. With my bare hands. Despite my objections, the embrace of rolling luggage seems symptomatic of a larger and more pervasive truth. You can sense the speed of the world, its interconnections, its people moving from one place to the next. Globalism. We live in an age of efficiency, where an inventor who can squeeze seconds or grams off an existing service or product can make millions. Our baggage with wheels literally propels us forward. Unless you are that poor old lady in Calgary. I’m sure someone, somewhere, is working on Rolling Luggage 2.0, something even more convenient, more flexible and, hopefully, better looking. A friendly word of advice for all budding inventors: Please make the wheels silent. Write to us: letters@enroutemag.net Arjun Basu, the former editor-in-chief of enRoute, recently published his first short-story |
