T-9 Luggage

I am sure I am not the only one who has heard someone say "I love you more than my luggage"!   If you think about luggage is very important to a traveler.  Countless styles, sizes, colors, shapes, hard sided, soft sided, wheeled (two, four, and 180 swivel) the list could go on and on.  Let's not even try to identify all the specialized bags, makeup, toiletries etc. again a list that is to vast to quantify.  Now more than ever the right piece of luggage is extremely important. The airline industry has seen to it that the traveler must be a master packer to ensure they are not charged more in luggage fees then the actual ticket cost.  I am allowed one piece of checked baggage up to 50 lbs on an international flight, one carry-on as well as one smaller piece.  Will, due to his superstar status as a world traveler, is allowed to check up to three pieces up to 70 lbs each free, as well as a carry-on and one smaller piece.  Thus the quandary, how to pack to ensure I have enough clothing etc. to last three and a half weeks as well as room to return home with wonderful treasures acquired along the way without paying extra luggage fees?  Luggage also has to last the test of the dreaded baggage handler, flash back to the Samsonite commercial where a gorilla is beating a bag within an inch of its nuts, bolts, seams and zippers.  I could of course pay to check another bag, feed the airline industry coffers, allow them to win.  That will never happen, it is a moral imperative to try to beat the system, work magic so as to not have to pay one more red cent to an already greedy industry.  Will and I spent the day shopping in Birmingham trying to figure out how much we need to take, what we can do, how we can share an additional bag, which he would check.  We do not want to check an empty bag, nor do we want to under pack a bag, that's just not right.  In the end we are going to purchase a yet to be mentioned special piece of luggage, the duffel.  Now this is not just any duffel, this duffel is a duffel in a bag.  Yes a bag that opens up and becomes a  carry-on duffel and then packs away again into a small bag.  But that to leads to many other questions, how big?  I cannot be so big that it must be checked, and if it is checked it cannot contain anything fragile since it is soft sided.  In the end it seems that luggage is the glue that holds any trip together.  Your valuable belongings must make through to the other side in one piece and not get lost or destroyed along the way.  In the end no matter what you pack, or if your luggage can stand up to being beaten by a gorilla you entrust everything down to your underwear to the airline industry, a daunting thought.  I am sure by the time we leave a decision will be made, but until then the jury is still out.