Baguettes and Bags

Hi. I am particularly interested in telling the world, today, that I do not find it problematic or dangeroux to hang your baguette out of your bag with the naked end sticking out into the world. Not to mention with the flour dusting the back of your coat! This, in my humble belief, is what makes the damn thing taste so damn good. I've taken these things all over the place--on my bike, on the subway, walking around for hours, through Central Park, on trains, you name it...and I have never once been unnerved by the potential of germs or dirt getting into my mouth from the end (if in fact the end even MAKES it home at the same time I do in the first place! eek I like to eat the end as a snack on my way, esp if it's warM) and do not intend to ever cover it or put the naked end face first into the bag in which I am carrying it. I love a good dirty baguette, but then again perhaps this is just all a naivete I picked up as a young girl living in France....ooh la la sigh sigh. I do sit here home sick from work thinking up the one million ways I could have contracted a virus in this heinous city...but gosh darn it baguette dirt is not one of them!