My Bike is my Mule

I have found that living as an expatriate can cause difficulties when it comes to grocery shopping.  Things that are available in the foreign land aren't necessarily what I'm accustomed to which obviously has both benefits and pitfalls.  Maybe I'll write about another time.  Something I find harder than that has been the mission of  transporting all the food back to my place of residence when I lack a car.  I would hate to do this in Auckland - the public transport is stupid over there (has it improved at all?) - and thankfully I've never had to try. 

Here in Bloomington, I ride my bike.  We've hitched a little crate on the back which I fill up, also filling up my backpack and sometimes an extra cloth bag or two that I hang from my handle bars.  It gets pretty wobbly so I have to go slowly, and I try to stick to the footpath as much as possible.  

The attachment that the crate sits on is slightly precarious.  We've used zipties to attach the crate to it and it to the seat post of the bike.  They often snap so I've learned to carry extras. I was a little bit vigorous in my uphill ride the other day.  I heard a plonk and the bike felt lighter...the zipties around the bike's post had snapped and let the crate slide back over the wheel - my groceries were all over the road.  Nothing was badly damaged - I only broke one egg - and I didn't have any extra zipties.  Oh, the joys!  I loaded up the cloth bags I always carry and balanced everything off the handle bars, walking most of the way home from there.  Even though I had been on the road at that point, I wasn't in the middle of a busy intersection.  Things could have been worse.  

I love the feeling when I get home with all that food.  It's the feeling of wealth and prosperity combined with strength at conquering an obstacle.