Situation: you have a EDC/work bag with the things you need during the day: some EDC items, tablet/notebook/journal, water bottle, etc. You have a more comprehensive get home bag (GHB) in your vehicle, ready to be carried on your back if necessary.

If you have to strike out on foot, how do you integrate your EDC/work bag with the more comprehensive GHB, with minimal fuss & wasted time?

- Use a small work bag that docks to the larger GHB kept in your car? Some travel backpacks have this feature.
- Plan to dump your work bag contents into the GHB?
- Use a work bag that is bigger than necessary day to day, and plan to use the extra room in it to carry GHB items that are in a duffel bag in your vehicle?

I'm just looking for some fresh ideas. It's challenging to have a daily bag that transitions well to a GHB situation. As much as anything, it's because there are a lot of small fiddly items that don't seem to pack well in a GHB. And an outsized daily bag makes you look like a hiker every day on the job & in the city.

I don't have a GHB (mostly because, I work from home 80% of the time!)

But I did have a somewhat similar setup to what you describe on a trip I recently made. I had my suitcase (carry on) that was full of clothes and things I would only be using in the hotel. And inside that suitcase, I had an EDC bag. The EDC bag contained things I use when outside of the hotel - on day excursions (examples: binoculars, water bottle). For the things that I might be using EITHER on a day trip OR in the hotel (examples: Tylenol, Android tablet, flashlight) - those things resided in the EDC bag.

There were a lot more individual items in my EDC bag than in my suitcase. But the EDC items were smaller in size, so they fit easily in the EDC bag. My suitcase was big enough to hold it's normal stuff (mostly clothes) and also had enough extra room for me to put in and take out the smaller EDC bag.

My suitcase was serving a similar purpose as your GHB. It contained items that would be needed at some point, but not as often as the EDC items. I left my suitcase in the hotel. You'd be leaving your GHB in your car. You EDC does not necessary have to fit inside your GHB as my EDC fit into my suitcase. Your EDC would be perfectly OK if it attached to the outside of your GHB, maybe using molle attachments.

You're not using your EDC -or- your GHB. You're using your EDC -or- your GHB/EDC together.

I simply do not have a GHB. My commute is half the distance of my short running loop, but I normally use mine bicycle.

My EDC bag is my 24-hour kit. Therefore, I don't need two bags.

Jeanette Isabelle

I don’t worry too much about it. My truck is a kit on wheels with lots of gear. The GHB is just part of it. For work my only EDC is pocket carry, other work items are only for work; I would leave them in the truck if I needed to strike out on foot. There’s no laptop/tablet to fret about, but my iPhone will stay in its pocket.

So the plan is to get back to the truck (normally a short walk), dump whatever work stuff I need to dump and then just listen to the radio to get a bit more SA, then make a decision to remain with the truck, get a room or start walking.

The decision is situational dependent. Did the “Big One” knock down a bridge or is it just bad traffic. If it’s just bad traffic (a common condition in SOCAL) I’ll hit a good brewery that’s on the way and have dinner without the beer (yeah, they serve dinner). If it’s a big EQ and bridges are a problem, then walking home may not be in the cards at all. Being stuck at work in this situation is not a bad thing. This is why the truck is a kit and I wait to get better information. Walking home is ~25 miles, but that first bridge being out is a show stopper. It would take one helluva EQ to take that bridge down so it being out would be an indicator of a very bad regional situation.

If/when I do start walking, leaving the truck at work is not a problem, it’s very secure.

Here are my basic EDC loadouts:

• On body: Stuff I have in pockets and the like. Most days this doesn't change much other than TSA-safe vs not-TSA-safe. I'll add to it for certain outdoor activities or CERT callouts.
• Laptop bag: This doesn't change much.
• Main emergency kit: Both my and my wife's car have one of these. It's in a pretty big bag and it's heavy, so if we're moving on foot over significant distance the plan would be to cache whatever doesn't seem to be needed, or distribute to others in our party to get the weight down to reasonable.
• Bail-out-bag: A small, firearm-centric bag for moving on foot up to 24 hours, kept in my car. The idea is if I need to leave my car RIGHT NOW to get to safety.
• Outdoors activity bag: A small bag focused on water and medical needs. I don't have this with me unless I know I'm going to be going on a day hike or the rural outdoor range I go to.

There are a lot of variables in play here. How far away is "home," for one thing. Makeup of your gear should adjust to the weather and seasonal conditions.

There is nothing inherently wrong with looking like a hiker when at work. When I was at work, I was often a hiker - one of the perks of being a park ranger.

Please define EDC. For me, it refers to those items invariably carried when you go out the door for nearly any event, and does not include job related or task specific items. For me, the EDC items, typically carried in one's pockets go along with what ever larger bag circumstances dictate. As I mentioned before, the distance to your objective is paramount here - big difference between a five mile and a sixty mile commute...

As a more direct answer to your question: If I'm leaving my car to strike out on foot, I have two basic scenarios in mind.

1) It's time to go RIGHT NOW. In that case I'm grabbing the bail-out-bag I built for that purpose, and then beat feet. No time for integration; if I didn't duplicate that function then I better not need it.

2) There's at least two minutes. For this case, step one is to STOP: Stop, Think, Observe and Plan. Maybe I dump the nonessential contents of my laptop bag and fill it with essentials (because my laptop bag is the most comfortable backpack I've ever owned). I could probably do that in a minute or two. Maybe I'm not going too far, have people with me, or can make multiple trips, and then I can bring all of the ridiculous contingency gear I've filled the trunk of my car with.

This a very good point. If an item is important enough to EDC, then it’s important enough to be redundant or duplicated in kits. I don’t consider my cellphone to be EDC, I often leave home without it.

My experience with SAR might be relevant here. I found that I needed to have a bag ready to go, RIGHT AWAY. When the call came, the requested response time ran from 'immediate" to "we will meet tomorrow morning at 4 AM." Thus my SAR bag had everything I would need to respond effectively to a situation where I needed to function unassisted for at least 24 hours. If there was time, I could fine tune the contents and modify my load, but that was not always possible.

Your GHB bag is analagous to the SAR bag. It should have what you need and should be capable standing alone. When a problem occurs, you might or might not have enough time to fine tune the contents with material from the EDC bag. Obviously, you will need to tinker with the contents to account for seasonal variation, if nothing else. You simply can't forsee the amount of time you will have to fiddle with bag contents in a real life emergency. That is why they are called emergencies....