Heavy backpack
January 19, 2020 § 6 Comments
I went to Trader Joe’s yesterday to get some ingredients for dinner. I don’t go there very often because I have to go down the hill. Time was that it was easy to go there. I never thought about it much. I just got in the car, drove down the hill, and did my shopping.
Man, are those days long gone. Trader Joe’s is a big deal now because whatever you buy there you have to carry back up the hill. The worst thing in the world is milk, a gallon of milk. That shit is heavy. But you don’t think about it when you were sitting in a car pressing down on a little metal pedal. I can’t believe we used to go to Trader Joe’s because the milk was one dollar cheaper than the supermarket across the street. It takes a lot more than a dollar to get me to ride my bike up that fucking hill now.
That’s not the only way my shopping has changed. Now I will go to the store and buy a carrot and a clove of garlic and a pepper and an onion and some butter. People look at you funny when you’re standing in line with the carrot, singular. “What the hell is that guy doing with a carrot and an onion?”
But I look at the other shoppers the same way. “What in the hell are they doing with a basket load full of food that would feed a small village when they are already fifty pounds overweight?”
That’s how I look at people in the supermarket parking lot, too. They are carrying all that food and buying all that crap simply because they have limitless horse power to carry it back home. If they had to carry a fraction of it on their back even on flat ground, they wouldn’t buy hardly any of it.
Anyway, I got home, or almost home, because I still had to stop at the supermarket across the street. Trader Joe’s didn’t have the right kind of peppers I was looking for. So I went into the store and bought a pepper. It cost twenty-two cents.
I was sweaty and hungry as hell. It took another 40 minutes or so to make dinner. Everything tasted so good. As Cervantes said, “hunger is the best sauce.”
END
Cycling in the South Bay 
In Japan people ride bikes with baskets to smaller supermarkets and buy one bag of groceries maximum. Many go everyday and buy a few things. Japanese refrigerators are small and cabinet space is small. I’ve seen hundreds of bikes parked at the train stations. They have a transportation system that actually works.
That, they do!
You, sir, are on the path toward panniers. Or at least baskets. Also, WTF do you need a gallon of milk for two people?
My motto is, “Don’t buy what you can’t carry!” Anyway, when you eat a dozen cookies a day … you drink lots of milk!
We don’t want to buy a dedicated cargo bike, so we have a trailer. It connects quickly and easily, and we can carry several bags of groceries or other cargo. However, we live in an area that’s as flat as a pancake. If we had to climb an actual hill with our rig, we’d be in eleventeeth gear, and the little old lady with her walker would be lapping us.
900 feet of climbing at the end; the last two walls are 18% and 15%, respectively!