HI, I'M KEVEN.

When I was a kid, my favorite part of each new school year was getting to pick out a fresh backpack at the supermarket when my parents took me back-to-school shopping. Kids' backpacks weren't (and probably still aren't) made to last back then, so I'd typically make it about six or seven months into each grade before my pack was a muddy, crinkled mess with burst seams and tattered straps. While it wasn't fun walking to class and suddenly having all my school supplies spill out onto the floor behind me, I loved getting to see what new offerings were being sold by the likes of Jansport and High Sierra each year.

Back in those days, my chief interest was never what cartoon character or cool design was printed on my backpack— it was how many compartments and pockets my pack had. After all, I needed to be able to store all my books, stationery, snacks, and BeyBlades all in their individual, perfectly segmented pockets. Anything less would be chaos. I still remember this one particular day in kindergarten— we were being taught how to count by moving paperclips from one pile into another with magnets. Instead of forming two piles, I laid out my paperclips in an exceptionally neat square grid. The teacher told me I wasn't doing the activity right, and swept my grid of paperclips back into a messy pile with her hand. I must've blacked out, because I don't remember anything past that. Perhaps I destroyed the classroom in a fit of rage.

In any case, the inexplicable perfectionism of my childhood eventually blossomed into the full-on unfiltered neuroticism of my adult self. By the start of college I had grown up to a towering 6'2'' (ladies, don't all come up at once), and it became impossible to find a backpack that didn't hurt my back after just a few minutes of wear. I was also becoming increasingly frustrated with the way that regular supermarket backpacks would fall apart so quickly, and wanted something that I could truly wear for rest of my life, or at the very least throughout college.

A lot of people on campus were carrying North Face Recon bags, so I used some leftover money in my dining account and purchased one from the student store. It was incredible. Lightweight, comfortable, and super organized. The material was a super slick nylon ripstop that had a cool sheen to it. Plus, the gigantic North Face logo plastered right on the front panel also gave me unfathomable PNW clout (ladies, seriously, don't all come up at once). I was ecstatic. I brought that bag on every commute, every trip, and every little adventure I went on. I had finally found my perfect, buy-it-for-life, do-it-all backpack.

Four months later, I walked out of the mall with a brand new Lululemon Cruiser backpack. The Recon had sprouted a small tear at the top of its left shoulder strap two weeks into me owning it, and by the end of fall quarter it had basically tore clean off. The Cruiser wasn't as cool-looking or as feature-packed as the Recon, but my friend Nic had told me about Lululemon's no-questions-asked lifetime free repair program, and I was more or less sold. It felt decently comfortable when I tried it on in the store, and it had a bunch of cool-looking tiny external pockets, which made it easy to store and grab all my gadgets. I was pretty excited to put my new bag through its paces on an upcoming trip to Alaska that Dad had booked for the whole family. I packed it full of clothes, threw it on, and subsequently returned from the trip with excruciating back pain.

That summer, Nic and I found out about Tom Bihn— a premium backpack company based right in our home city of Seattle. They had a huge cult following online, and an array of wacky colors and styles. What people seemed to praise the most was how comfortable and durable Tom Bihn bags were. Nic looked at his backpack, which was starting to fall apart, and I looked at my Lululemon-branded medieval back torturing device. With nothing better to do, we piled into his minivan and took off for the Tom Bihn factory in SoDo.

"Nic, I already have a newish backpack, so I'm probably not going to buy a new one. You should get one though."

"Wow, Nic, this factory is pretty cool. You can actually see them making the backpacks and sewing everything together and stuff."

"Wow, Nic, this one's actually really comfortable. They definitely look way better in person than on the website, too."

"Nic, this one's got a MODULAR laptop compartment!"

45 minutes later, Nic and I walked out of the factory each brandishing a brand new Tom Bihn Brain Bag. If the Recon was a BMW, the Brain Bag was a Rolls Royce. It was the most supremely comfortable backpack I had ever put on. The thick 1050d high-tenacity ballistic nylon looked practically indestructible. Every seam was reinforced; the craftsmanship was second to none. We beamed. I couldn't wait to go back in a week and pick up a Tom Bihn modular laptop sleeve and a bunch more accessories.

"What do you mean the laptop sleeves are DISCONTINUED???"

I was devastated. I had just spent all this money on an ultra-premium backpack, only to discover that one of the core accessories that made it usable wasn't being sold anymore. Nic found an old vertical laptop sleeve from high school that worked well enough for his Brain Bag, but I couldn't find anything that worked for mine. Every time I set my backpack down in class, I heard the dull thunk of my $1300 MacBook Air hitting the floor with only a single layer of fabric between it and the hard linoleum floor. I was livid. I spent weeks scouring forums, Facebook groups, even subreddits, for anyone who was willing to sell their Tom Bihn laptop sleeve used. No one was. The fans had gotten wind of the discontinuation and were holding onto their investments.

Nic tried to talk me into finding a decent off-brand laptop sleeve like his and just making do with it, but I wasn't having any of it. He may as well have swept my paperclips into a mess. I wanted the fancy Tom Bihn sleeve, which had specialized rails that could attach to these little clips at the top of the Brain Bag. After all, you don't use aftermarket parts on a Rolls Royce. The cool modular system was half the reason I even bought the Brain Bag at all. If I was just going to use some random laptop sleeve that didn't fit perfectly into the ecosystem, I might as well have just gone back to the cheap supermarket backpacks!

Months later, and still nobody was selling. Not for a reasonable price, anyway. But my endless browsing of backpack enthusiast forums had exposed me to a new up-and-coming backpack company hailing from Bozeman, Montana: Evergoods.

The way people raved online about Evergoods backpacks, you'd have thought angels descended from heaven and personally bestowed these packs upon humanity or something. Every backpack, travel, or EDC (that's "every day carry") focused YouTube channel and blog was featuring Evergoods bags. Forums were cluttered with nothing but pictures of people's Evergoods purchases. Genuinely, nobody could shut up about them. Eventually, I took the bait and visited the Evergoods website.

The aesthetic of Evergoods instantly drew me in. Unlike Tom Bihn, which had sort of a 90's, dorky dad-bag charm, EG backpacks had clean, sharp lines and a futuristic feel. Not only did they use their own custom fabric that you couldn't get anywhere else, they proclaimed that they'd developed this new revolutionary harness system that was supposed to be more comfortable than any backpack that came before it. The accessories weren't impossible to get like Tom Bihn's, either, and it wasn't long before I had placed an order for a brand new Civic Travel Bag from Evergoods, and a bunch of Civic Access Pouches.

I liked my Evergoods backpack so much that I actually woke up looking forward to the walk to campus each morning. I felt an inexplicable sense of superiority over my classmates as I pulled my textbooks and accessories out of their perfectly segmented and modular compartments that I had configured myself using Evergoods' ecosystem. The construction of the bag was such that even when it only had a bit of stuff in it, it didn't crumple or look floppy— one of the main frustrations I'd had with almost every bag I'd owned before. When my Dad announced that he wanted to take the family on a trip to New York, I couldn't wait to take my awesome new Evergoods backpack— it even opened up clamshell style so you could pack it like a suitcase. I was ecstatic from the moment we left the house to the moment we walked out of JFK:

"Damn, my back really fucking hurts."

I just want to start by saying that Subway is perhaps the most over-hated fast food chain. It consistently gets ranked as one of the worst, if not THE worst, places to eat, alongside usual suspects such as Arby's or KFC. In my opinion, this is totally unwarranted. In fact, Subway is usually among my top choices when circumstances demand that I absolutely need to get some cheap, salty, and delicious slop to satisfy my government-implanted addiction to ultra-processed foods.

In all fairness, I can't say if I like Subway because I genuinely think their food is good, or simply because of all the nostalgia that I've associated with it. When I was a kid, every soccer practice culminated in a visit to Subway. My Grandpa used to take me on these long bike rides that would always inexplicably end up there. When my friend Ariel and I were dead set on becoming successful street musicians, we'd somehow always grab lunch at the coveted Church of Eat Fresh™.

I eventually quit soccer, my Grandpa moved back to Singapore, and Ariel and I ended up going to different colleges— but I still like to eat at Subway sometimes when I'm missing them.

All this to say I will tolerate no sass for the beginning of this story, which starts with me sitting in a Subway eating a Turkey Italiano. I was sort of absentmindedly people-watching while I ate, looking at the customers standing in line and trying to guess what they'd order. I've been doing that ever since this one time a couple years ago, when this guy Ariel and I knew wanted to hang out with us during band practice. Eventually we got hungry, and so we took him to our usual spot. We watched in horror as this complete sociopath ordered a six-inch Swiss cheese and mayonnaise sandwich. With black olives. He didn't even ask for it toasted.

Anyway, this time there was a guy that was just absolutely hurling abuse at the poor woman making his sandwich. I could barely catch what the altercation was about, but the transaction ended with this man throwing his footlong on the floor and actually stomping on it. You might think that I'm making this all up, but believe me when I tell you that this absolute specimen of a human male was literally jumping up and down on his sandwich with both feet like some kind of cartoon character. The other customers and I watched in horror as he stormed out the establishment, still shouting obscenities, climbed into a blue Chevy Malibu, and drove off with his middle finger sticking out of the open window.

Now, as commonplace as cars are, I feel like a lot of people don't realize just how incredible these machines really are. Your average commuter sedan generally houses a four-cylinder internal combustion engine. A series of electronic fuel injectors spray a specific amount of gasoline into each cylinder, which are then sparked to create a series of small explosions that forces each piston downwards in a controlled mechanical sequence. This explosive energy rotates the car's driveshaft, which converts the energy into rotational force that spins the wheels and propels the vehicle forward.

This amount of power is no joke, even in the dinkiest cars. Even your Grandmother's crappy fuel-crisis era Honda Civic is several magnitudes more powerful than the world's fastest land mammal. Think of the last time you took a road trip and drove on the interstate. Can a cheetah sustain a running speed of 80 miles per hour for days on end? Car enthusiasts love to talk smack about each other's rides and compare horsepower. Your average commuter grade car generally has a horsepower of around 90 to 120, which is considered in motorsports to be "low power" or "slow". But have you ever personally tried to resist the pulling strength of ninety horses? How about just one horse?

Basically, a car is a three thousand pound hunk of stainless steel, powered by explosions, that also happens to contain the collective pulling force of a small army. And I had just watched a man-baby who threw a tantrum in a Subway climb into one and drive onto a public road.

I think all of us have known or met at least one person like this. An impulsive, inconsiderate jerk who you can't even believe has the gall to treat people around them the way that they do. You wouldn't even trust this person to cover your shift at work, and yet when you see them drive out of the company parking lot in their lifted Jeep Wrangler, you somehow just implicitly trust that they'll actually make it home without running over several bystanders and causing an eight-car pileup on the highway.

The other day I was driving to visit my girlfriend when a car in the lane to my right suddenly began swerving into my lane, almost hitting my car square in the right fender. As I slammed the brakes to avoid a collision, I glared into the car's driver-side window to see that the woman driving was swirling a large plastic cup of iced coffee in front of her own face. Subsequently, the car behind me blasted their horn, overtook me, and then proceeded to aggressively brake-check me. This bold vigilante was driving a big pickup truck with a vinyl decal of one of those "Don't Tread on Me" flags messily plastered to the rear window. I had to pull over just so I didn't explode with rage at the absurdity of it all.

Every weekend I visit Costco with my old man. And every weekend without fail I see people shouting as they shove their carts into one another's way, staring blankly while blocking entire aisles, and generally having a complete lack of spatial awareness. They load their shopping carts up with Kirkland Signature mush for their troglodyte children, curse as they cut each other off in line, and then drive away in their cars.

Over 5 million automotive accidents happen per year in the United States, but yeah, I'm sure a bigger backup camera and infotainment system will fix it. Honestly, I'm surprised the figure isn't 10 million. It's a miracle that any of us are allowed behind the wheel at all.

Anyway, the Turkey Italiano from Subway is actually pretty good. You won't find it on the menu at all of the locations, but it's basically just the Italian B.M.T with sliced turkey on it instead of ham. The key is to not go overboard on the sauces, since the bread and meats are already so salty and sweet. I usually just ask for yellow mustard, or sometimes I'll just skip the sauce entirely and just ask for some black pepper. Load up on all the free veggies, and you can't go wrong.