Quote:
Originally Posted by genuinegirly
The joys of living in a college town: you and your man have it made, Snowy.
Cycling to the grocery store is a cathartic experience. It works out well when you only have yourself and one other to feed. You'd be shocked if you observed how many fresh vegetables one can cram into a hiking backpack. Reserve a pouch for frozen goods, place the dairy products just beside it... I don't imagine it would work for a family larger than 3.
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Yes, yes we do. Our town is a great place to live.
When we go grocery shopping on our bicycles, we each wear our backpacks and I have a detachable basket for the front of my bicycle, which is really nice for going to the farmer's market. We also both have racks on the back of our bicycles that can have larger parcels strapped to them if need be. Generally, though, we don't do our big shopping trip without our car, but that only happens once a month, and we also take back all of our cans and bottles at the same time.
Where I live, it's actually faster in some instances to ride a bicycle than drive a car. For instance, it takes longer to drive and find a place to park at the grocery store that's 10 minutes away than it does to bike over there and lock up at the bike rack; part of that is because the grocery store is on a very congested, busy street that's hard to turn on to from a side street, but if you're on a bicycle, it's easy to hop off and walk across the crosswalk. Traffic will stop for a pedestrian, but it won't stop to let another car turn on to the road. Downtown is also better by bike or bus; parking down there on Saturday mornings (when the farmer's market is) is a complete pain.
I just can't fathom why people would want to spend so much $$$ on gas to drive their car. Don't get me wrong; I enjoy driving. But I would prefer to save my gas for worthy trips over just running errands around town that can be accomplished in other ways. Driving around my town can be a nightmare--the streets in some neighborhoods are narrow and hard to navigate in a car, plus the constant stop-go-stop-go in our compact city burns more gas. I'm also always afraid I'm going to hit a bicyclist or a pedestrian when I'm out driving. I'd rather save that gas for a trip to the beach or the mountains.
Plus, you can't beat the feeling of superiority that getting somewhere under your own power gives you!
