Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

In the early or mid-1990s, I bought an Eagle Creek "solo journey" backpack, a model that was recommended online; zipped tight, it was a legal carry-on for most airlines, and if I used the expansion zipper, there were built-in compartments for the shoulder and hip straps. By the time I saw the review, the model had been discontinued, replaced with something larger (so not checked luggage), but I found one in a shop in Greenwich Village. I carried it on most of my longer-than-a-weekend trips for twenty years.

It's been wearing out for a while, and Eagle Creek no longer makes anything at all like it; last summer I bought a replacement from Tom Bihn. The replacement appears to be the best thing on the market in that approximate size—but it doesn't give me as much flexibility as the old bag, which I decided to keep using as long as possible.

Somehow, on my way home from Montreal in April, the bag acquired an unpleasant odor. (Oddly but fortunately, none of the contents did.) After some procrastination, I tried laundering it, because I didn't have much to lose. It smells a lot better, but better isn't good enough: there's still a faint mildewy odor, and given the age of the bag, I'm not going to try heroic measures, and just threw it away.