I return from Singapore on Friday morning slightly sick, the last of our family to pass through this particular wave. The two early-morning late-night days on the road did not help, though they were useful in other ways.

My phone, reactivated, brings good news: partner and friends are at the beach on the other side of Lantau, celebrating a friend’s birthday. Come take your afternoon calls from the beach, they say.

In the arrival area I get coffee and am surprised by two other friends. They are just back from skiing in Korea, and still on holiday, only laying over here at home. They are headed to Thailand to meet a parent on vacation for the weekend. Chance encounters like these remind me of the number of friends we’ve made in Hong Kong, and how every one is on the go. It’s a good feeling, being part of this region, of Asia, of Southeast Asia, where everyone is back and forth constantly. Another Hong Kong friend is in Thailand this weekend, I say, for a frisbee tournament. They know, more than one actually. It is a coincidence of timing, of our collective pace.

Hong Kong’s airport is on the far side of Lantau, and normally I take the train back to Central, to my own island, and am home in an hour after landing. It’s a ride I know well, and have loved since long before we relocated. Today though I walk out into the cool humidity of the taxi stand and hunt the line of blue ones specific to this island. Red for urban areas, green for the New Territories, and blue for Lantau. Hong Kong’s system seemed weird, years ago. Now it’s just home, familiar. As the taxi grinds its way up the tall pass, over some of the highest parts of Hong Kong, I think about how lucky this is, to know the beach I’m going to well, to have spent so many afternoons there when the world was closed. We got a lot out of exploring Hong Kong, despite the sacrifices that left us with no where else to go. And now, with everyone bouncing around again we are able to do both, to bring people to the beach and see friends in foreign countries. It’s a good life.

After my calls, we walk along the sand together, looking up at the mountain. It’s top is shrouded in clouds, facing the sea. It’s wonderful to breathe the salt air, to rest a bit, and to heal. It’s wonderful to be able to celebrate the friends we love with little planning.

I stand on the balcony and watch the cherry blossoms. The world is beautiful and oddly calm. My partner is correct in her explanation: “everyone is in a park getting drunk because of sakura”. The weather is perfect, just barely chill, and restaurants are indeed empty for a Saturday night. We are happy. Having simply bought cheap tickets we lucked into both friends from out of town (Nagoya, Taipei) and sakura in Tokyo. This is exactly the kind of luck we’d hoped to manufacture for ourselves, and our smiles to each other, when 5’s is momentarily doing something on her own, reflect our inner joy at this success.

As I write often, we are working hard to remember who we meant to be, and to allow ourselves the individual space to bring joy back to our family. It’s a good practice that takes work. More regularly now we go on trips solo, for work or out of curiosity. We come back refreshed, more interested in our shared reality, more aware of the brevity and luck in our shared existence.

The next day we too are in the park, four and then five adults keeping tabs on three children. They collect acorns and wander between families on tarps, waving at other children. The oldest does the two story slide, but the younger two are afraid and beg off, eventually being carried down the climbing walls that serve as castle entrances. Every slide has a line of four or six polite children, the local style our foreign kids have to be told to notice. They simply cut straight to the front, not seeing the quietly perturbed children waiting patiently to the side. We remind them and they adapt, for our children are children of Asia, the three of them born in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan. We are the diaspora, this group of us in this park in Tokyo for hanami. We are all seeking refuge from the collapse of the American empire. The friend without children explains it as clearly as I’ve ever heard:

“It’s like I died and this is a new life, so different from my old and yet so much the same. Here, all my worries are gone.”

My partner and I will talk about this feeling all the way home. In some way it is what I’ve been trying to explain to myself since I was eighteen, or more accurately since I moved abroad at twenty two.

What my friend means, I think, is that if everyone is ok everyone can have less fear, because no one has to take from someone else. By raising the floor for us all, by providing parks and bathrooms and trains and housing and food, we remove the need to threaten, to scare, to rush, to honk, to run over, to crash into, to fight, to flip off. We suddenly have so many fewer enemies.

“it’s ok to be anyone here, to be whomever you want, as long as you’re not hurting anyone else it’s ok,” my friend says.

He’s right. Why is that such a rare feeling? Why did we not feel like that in SF, where we each lived for at least a decade? I can’t quite be sure, though I have a host of ideas. Usually I start with bathrooms, with trains, and with the selfish individuality of car culture.

On this day though I just listen to him. I lie back on the cardboard we’ve spread on the dirt and watch the kids run. I watch my other friends, in town from Taipei, enjoy Tokyo, enjoy their vacation. I watch our daughter follow the big girl around collecting acorns. I watch the sakura, so grateful to be here for this week. I watch the other people, likewise sprawled on tarps or blankets on the dirt, likewise chatting with friends and likewise happy to be out doors in the spring, at home in Tokyo for one of the best moments of the year.

There are so many reasons why we feel good here.

Sometimes it’s enough to feel.

The 2019 discovery of Rofmia in many ways represented the culmination of all my prior backpack hunting. After years of traveling with the North Face Base Camp Duffel and the Outlier Rolltop rolled up inside, I’ve transitioned to a true one bag solution with the Rofmia Backpack. As I have both v1 and v2, this is a review of both models. The v1 I have is the 40L size, and although Rofmia has take down the images there are some good reviews on Reddit here and here. The v2 has been thoroughly reviewed here as well. My thoughts, then, are a supplement, rather than a replacement for those notes. As such, let me begin by saying it’s a pleasure to review a simply-named item. Rofmia barely brands their products and uses a simple naming scheme. After years of long and inelegant product names, I feel great delight at reviewing a backpack called simply “backpack”.

We bought the 40L v1 in person at the shop in Minokamo in the fall of 2019. That sentence explains much of the reason I no longer read bag reviews. I’ve spent twenty years in manufacturing, learning how things were made, and for years that knowledge has led me to value things made in the US or in places I live or have lived, by people I know. For years I’ve valued the world we are building by buying things as much as the things we are buying. Money before words, as my GR1 review, now a decade old, states. The Rofmia backpack is sustainable in that the human endeavor required to produce it will support the producer. This may be the only thing that matters.

As for the v1, after that purchase we have carried it around Japan many, many times, to Vietnam, Ireland, Taiwan, and Thailand, as well as across the US a half dozen times, if not more. The v2 was purchased on release in 2020, and has been around used in Hong Kong extensively, as well as across the US, Japan, and on several shorter trips to China and Taiwan.

Any conversation about these bags has to start with dyneema and a philosophy of travel. Re-reading my review of the Outlier bag, I realize I perhaps haven’t discussed the first aspect enough. As documented across this site, I’ve been trying to travel with less for years. I’ve also been trying to live with less, when on the road and at home. In some situations that has lead to spending quite a bit of money on bags, and I recognize the inconsistencies. For those who’ve never had a dyneema bag, the value is hard to explain. Dyneema feels unlike any other material, and its properties are quite different than anything else I’ve used in bags. Unlike the TPU laminate of the North Face Base Camp Duffel, it isn’t abrasion resistant. Unlike more common cordura or nylon, it doesn’t stretch at all. And unlike all of these, it’s very loud, crinkling like a stiff paper bag when rolling and closing. The tradeoff is that it’s solid, strong, and light. Comparing the dyneema of the Outlier Ultrahigh or Rofmia bags to the cordura of the GR1, for example, is like comparing an F150 to a bicycle, or a house to a tent. They feel like entirely separate objects. The GR1 has a durability that can’t be disguised, and is wonderful. It’s also heavy, for a backpack. The dyneema bags feel like a thin tarp, or a thick paper bag, in some way both utilitarian and temporary. The Rofmia and Outlier have more in common with the blue Ikea bags than cordura ones, albeit with better hand feel.

My first dyneema bag, the Outlier Ultrahigh Rolltop, remains one of my favorite items of all time, and for years was the best bag I’d ever used. It still may be. The Ultrahigh was my first experience with a bag that I wanted to carry empty, just in case, because carrying it empty didn’t affect what I was comfortable doing in any way. That’s the difference between heavy things and light ones. Heavy things, eventually, affect what we’re willing to do while carrying them. As someone who always wants to walk, who is constantly looking to climb things, to run, and to go just a bit farther than I’d meant to, the lack of weight in my belongings sets me free. Having lightweight bags and fewer items also allows me to carry things for others, without feeling overburdened. The Rofmia backpack v1 is the ultimate embodiment of this philosophy, and in many ways feels untouchable. Consider, briefly, this table of bag weights and sizes that I’ve maintained in Notes for years. Please don’t consider the kind of person who maintains such a table.

Clearly the Rofmia backpacks (both, but especially v1) stand out for the combination of weight and capacity. It is twice as big (closed) as the Outlier and weighs less than half the North Face duffel I’d been carrying. Coupled with the collapsable design that enables the bag to be used in place of both (expanded for travel, cinched down for meetings and daily carry around town), and the Rofmia is unparalleled.

In the interest of staving off questions, yes, I have a list of other bags I’ve looked at but not purchased, for one reason or another, for comparison. Those are below.

The obvious next question is “why do we also have a v2?”

An answer is that there are two of us.

Another answer is the changes. The Rofmia backpack v2 adds the following features I appreciate: fidlock closures (instead of clips), a zip-opening for the laptop slot, two external water bottle holders, and a sunglasses/cellphone zip pocket on top. There are also a half-dozen other improvements, like the internal compression and a nicer arrangement of the internal front pocket areas, that are interesting but not why we own both. The trade, of 5L of storage for 230 g, makes for a much nicer daily bag around town. Having water bottle slots, a place to quickly store a phone, and most critically a way to access the laptop slot without unrolling, are all great changes. Fidlocks make for a faster, nicer experience. The bag is still wonderfully expandable, and can hold a ton of groceries or whatever surprising gear needs arise.

However, for long international travel with one bag and little gear, the v1 still reigns supreme. In 2022 I went on solo trip of the kind that used to dominate my pre-covid life: a whirlwind ten days in Ireland, New York, and San Francisco. This trip required work clothes, casual clothes, cold weather gear, hot weather gear, a laptop and a variety of other nonsense. Because I was flying solo, I had the pick of v1 or v2, and v1 provided the extra capacity that was critical by the return flight. In terms of the method, for readers who have not tried true one bag travel, it is unparalleled, assuming physical mobility.

The ability to carry on in all situations is absolutely worth the volume constraints, as I leave airports up to 45 minutes prior to fellow passengers, and am never concerned about transfers, delays, re-bookings, or similar issues. I also never wonder what bag anything is in. The tradeoffs, of having to carry everything at all times, are acceptable, and incentivize a lighter lifestyle. On the above occasion I spent my nine free hours in Dublin (after taking the bus into the city immediately on landing) walking, covering some 20 km while carrying everything I had brought. While definitely a burden, the ability to carry all my gear allowed me to enjoy my free time in a new city in a way that would not have been possible with a suitcase or even multiple bags. With my old duffel set up it would have been possible, but less comfortable. For nine hours of walking, every gram matters.

The v1’s compromises, mostly of no laptop slot and no water bottle holders, are well worth the weight trade off. The internal compression, while cleaner, is less flexible, and I’d stick to the v1 external style. The phone/sunglasses zip pocket is wonderful, but not necessary. And the fidlocks, while nice, aren’t enough nicer to be worth the weight. The only change I’d truly fight for is the laptop slot, but after five years, I can say it’s ok without. I can also say I’m very curious about the v1.5 Rofmia built for a custom release for Lister, which seems to match my feedback, and is probably the type of thing I’d request custom if I ever need another.

The most honest statement I can make about the Rofmia Backpack v1 is what I said at the beginning: I stopped reading about backpacks after getting it. Five years later it remains one of my favorite objects of all time, and I no longer look for alternatives.

Given the length and positive nature of this review I should acknowledge some remaining points briefly.

First, price. Dyneema is an expensive material. In addition, bags hand made by people in developed countries that I personally have met are expensive products. For these reasons, and due to the odd and temperamental nature of Dyneema, I don’t point friends in the direction of these when I am asked for my backpack suggestions. Instead I suggest some of the bags of interest, hence that portion of the list above. I fully understand that our use case, of wanting to fly internationally with only a carry on, and have that carry on then usable as a day bag, is both esoteric and unnecessary. Still, it remains part of both of our personal and professional lives, and is a great experience. Beyond desire, I understand budget constraints and the inherently lower value sometimes placed on hand-made items. I have always placed a large value on knowing who made things. It’s a huge part of why I’ve spent the last twenty years in factories, and as part of global supply chains. In many ways I am willing to pay more for that knowledge, and visiting Rofmia in Minokamo, recounted in this post, was wonderful, and is exactly why we travel.

Second, durability. Dyneema is not a forever material. It will wear out, or shred, slowly becoming ever more ephemeral until there are holes. Many bags at similar price points promise “purchase once use forever” or similar slogans. Durable enough to be handed down to the next generation, for me, is of value in watches but not in backpacks. I also am well aware that selling one item to a customer per lifetime makes for a difficult business, and will be ok with whatever happens in five years or ten, when my time with this bag is up. This does however stop me from recommending dyneema bags to any and all.

Lastly, as my partner recently exclaimed, “these bags are expensive, fine, but they’re always sold out!”. It’s true. Outlier no longer makes a dyneema bag. Rofmia usually sells out new stock within a couple of days. And the Ghostly x RPMG bag listed here was made twice and probably never again, in small runs both times. This is the nature of expensive boutique items with odd markets, and I am not surprised. I do understand that it makes for a difficult recommendation.

Ah well. Perhaps given the difficulty of acquisition this review will be of use. To those, then, for whom backpacks are an open category of research and purchase; to those people still in search of a perfect bag: the Rofmia v1 backpack is that.

At least for me.