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Briggs & Riley Luggage ReviewPage 3
ABOVE: The Briggs & Riley Expandable Upright on a Deutsche Bahn station platform in Osnabrück, Germany. Field reportsSwitzerland In October, 2005, I packed the Briggs & Riley upright for a trip to Zürich, Switzerland, which required a change of airlines in Chicago. The bag was easy to handle on my local bus and light-rail transit, and being able to lower the two-position handle made it easier to maneuver through O'Hare's crowded terminals. I checked the bag from O'Hare to Zürich, where I took a train into the city and easily rolled the bag across the Limmat River, tram tracks, and traffic islands to my hotel. Over the next week and a half, I zigzagged through the country by train with the Briggs & Riley suitcase in tow. By the end of the trip, the bag was expanded and the bottom third of the suitcase was filled with press kits and books. Total weight was just shy of 44 pounds or 20 kg. I came to appreciate the "One-Touch" expansion feature: It made the bag much easier to handle when full, and it kept the suitcase from tipping over when parked. Paris In November and again in March of the following year, I packed the bag for trips to Paris, France.
I managed to avoid expanding the bag this time; instead, I packed it as full as I could in the normal position and trusted the zippers not to break. Again, the bag performed beautifully, and it was so well-balanced that it felt much lighter than the 33 pounds (15 kg) that registered on the Air France scale at the final check-in. On the second trip, I flew into London, walked half an hour to my hotel, and took a high-speed Eurostar train the next day to the Gare du Nord in Paris. I then walked 15 or 20 minutes to a rented apartment in Montmartre. The bag was small enough to fit the Eurostar train's overhead rack, and it maneuvered well in the crowded streets of London and Paris. Note: One wheel squealed noticeably in London, and I figured that I'd need to buy and snap in a new wheel when I got home. However, the noise went away after I cleaned grit out of the wheel (something that's easy to do with the Briggs & Riley user-replaceable wheel assemblies). Germany
Overall, the bag has held up well, even when loaded with books, press kits, and other heavy objects. An airline managed to rip one of the wheels from its moorings, but KLM's luggage-repair service picked up the bag, repaired it, and returned the suitcase to my hotel in les than eight hours. Spain and Portugal
As of summer, 2010, the Briggs & Riley upright still looks almost new except for slight abrasion of the nylon fabric caused by airline baggage handling. I've encountered only minor problem: A couple of the One-Touch expansion mechanism's screws have worked loose over time (a problem easily fixed with a screwdriver). Web linkBriggs & Riley Related article at Europe for VisitorsPacking for Europe Back to: Briggs & Riley Luggage Review - Page 1
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The
first journey involved two airplanes in each direction, a Roissybus into the
city, an RER train out to Charles de Gaulle Airport at the end of the trip, and
local commutes by Métro and on foot between
public transportation and our rented apartment in the Marais.
