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From: blp Category: Consumer Date: 07 August 2006 Time: 11:52 AM Review: For 3 or 4 years I've been carrying a big shoulder bag pretty much everywhere. People tell you occasionally that you should vary which shoulder you carry your bag on, but these bits of advice, like drink more water, always sound abstract and meaningless to me - more ways for worriers to keep their lives trivial and bossybootses to patronise you. At the same time, the bag's actually been feeling more and more like an instrument of torture, especially when I'm cycling and I have shifted it, reluctantly, to my left shoulder occasionally lately. On Friday I had an Indian head massage in Stoke Newington Fresh and Wild, just about realising I felt like shit and needed to do something about it. The lady finished up by telling me to buy a rucksack so as to distribute the loads I was carrying more evenly. No emotional metaphors implied. She also said I should drink more water because the pads that hold my spine up hydrated enough. Scarey. The thing is, this new rucksack I bought the next day, maybe combined with the extra water I'm drinking, is like a religious experience. I feel I'm going through a rebirth. The technology's really come on. It has these squidgy perforated foam straps that simply don't dig into your shoulders at all and more of the same foam lining the back of it. The girl in the shop told me this would prevent my back sweating under it, which was obviously not true, but she missed the real USP, which is that you can carry loads and loads of stuff and not feel like you're carrying anything. It's a fucking miracle. I put some stuff in it in the shop and walked out with it on and it didn't just not feel bad, it felt seriously good - like another massage. After two days I feel about an inch taller and suddenly have loads of energy. Cycling's become fun again. Thank you Indian Head Massage lady and thank you Deuter Speed Lite 15/350.