Grocery Shopping on a Bicycle (In 14 Easy - or Not - Steps)

For the first month we were here we rented a car. But since we weren't using the car enough to justify the rental price and expected our own car back at some point during the second month (as in, NOW), we discontinued renting once our first month was up. Not having a car hasn't really been a problem so far, because from where we're living it's easy to bike to the town center and to grocery stores. If we want to visit family or the immigration office in den Bosch (for example), it's easy to bike to the train station and catch a train to family or den Bosch (or to Brussels or Paris, for that matter). Also, so far the weather has mostly been good, so biking around has been no hardship. However, being car-less has changed the whole grocery shopping experience. But first a little background.

(1) We moved here from a large house, with a big kitchen, lots of cabinet space and a rather large pantry. Wijo was always complaining that he lived "in a puzzle," because the refrigerator and pantry were so full that every time he tried to find or remove something, he was "attacked" by something else falling out at him. Oh, and did I mention the extra refrigerator and free-standing freezer in the basement? Okay, I admit to having a little hoarding problem, but at least I know where I got it from (and so do you, Mom).

(2) We own a Subaru Outback, which car I have seen referred to as a "station wagon on steroids." I could probably buy at least six months' worth of groceries and fit it all in that car at once, no problem.

(3) My current car is a bike, with a two-sided saddle bag that can carry enough groceries for at least one day, no problem.

So I went grocery shopping on my bike, and it went something like this:

(1) Put on jacket with hood, because it could rain at any time, even if the weather looks good right now.

(2) Retrieve bicycle key from drawer. Make sure I am in possession of house keys and back gate key. Don't worry about shed key, because I refuse to lock the shed; how many keys is a person supposed to keep track of, anyway?

(3) Unlock back door, open shed door (which activity inconveniently requires both hands, since the shed door is not hung straight and therefore has to be lifted a little for the bolt to be pulled out or slid in). Irritably wonder, since this entire country is extremely flat; how hard can it be to hang a door straight?

(4) Place shoulder bag in bike saddle bag; unlock bicycle and back it out of shed; close and rebolt shed door.

(5) Use key (large, old-fashioned, really long skeleton key-type thing that requires significant finger strength and dexterity to operate) to unlock back gate and open gate, which is tricky because the door is not hung straight (deja vu!) and a strip of wood at the bottom tends to scrape along the ground and come partially loose, and will just break or fall right off one of these days, hopefully not while we are still renting this place.

(6) Wheel bike out, close and lock gate, and walk bike down little tiny bike alley to the street. Ride bike to grocery store (that's the easy part. Except if it's raining or there's a heavy wind).

(7) Upon arrival at store, park bike, check in pocket for bike key, belatedly remember, once again, that the key is always in the lock when the bike is unlocked; lock bike, pocket key, remove shoulder bag from saddle bag and enter store. If I'm having one of my more lucid days, like today, I do not insert the .50 euro piece into the grocery cart slot to remove a cart, because there is no way I can fit what I might be tempted to put into a grocery cart into the saddle bag. No, instead I take one of those little plastic baskets like the ones they have in American grocery stores, but here they have some with wheels and a long handle that allow you to roll the thing around behind you in the store rather than risk muscle spasms and lifelong disfigurement carrying it over your arm. I figure if I can fit it into the basket, I can fit it into the saddlebag.

(8) Conduct grocery shopping as usual, attempting to keep in mind that there is very limited available refrigerator, freezer, or saddlebag space.

(9) Emerge from store with shopping basket in tow, since they don't give you grocery bags in Dutch stores and the saddlebag is outside on the bike, anyway.

(10) Now here's the tricky part. Get shoulder bag and groceries from point A (shopping basket) into point B (saddlebag). Sounds straightforward, you say? Well, that shows what you know! What happens next is a precision, scientific balancing act. You can't just put 4 liters of milk and a couple of bottles of wine into one side of the saddle bag and a couple heads of lettuce into the other, now can you? Not if I understand gravity (well, actually I'm not at all sure I understand gravity, but you get the point)!  No, the items must be distributed with an eye both to volume and weight. Luckily, in this case, my one lonely spatial skill is volume. But even I, with my idiot savant aptitude for fitting things into proscribed space, am stretched to the limit by the problem of getting all the groceries from a full basket into the bicycle saddle bag. This time I mostly managed, but there was a head of broccoli and a box of white seedless grapes precariously located at the top of one side of the bag, which I couldn't fasten closed. And I had to bike through traffic dangling two half-loaves of bread in my left hand while balancing myself and the groceries. Why two half-loaves of bread, you ask? Why not just one whole loaf of bread? Because, silly, it's fresh-baked bread and goes stale (and bad) quickly, so you have to freeze some of it if you don't want to repeat this whole performance daily, and who has room for a whole loaf of bread in their freezer in this country? Not me, I can tell you that.

(11) Get partway home when it starts raining. Wait (in the rain) in the bike lane designated for straight-ahead or left turn traffic, conveniently located between the left-turn/straight-ahead car lane and the right-turn car lane, for the light to turn, which takes forever. When light turns, try to indicate with body language that I intend to turn left, because it's hard to signal a left turn when your left hand is holding two half-loaves of bread. Apparently fail to adequately signal left-turn intention to auto driver into whom I nearly crash as he continues forward while I am attempting to make left turn.

(12) Get most of the way home when an ominous splat-like sound signals contact between the aforementioned precariously-placed package of seedless white grapes and the road. Pull bike over, park on sidewalk, retrieve grapes, and continue home.

(13) Walk bike down bike alley, unlock gate with cleverly stored - and thus easily accessible - key in jacket pocket and walk bike up to back door of house to unload groceries. Like loading, unloading is not as easy at it might seem at first blush. No, take too many things out of one side of the bike and the whole thing topples.
But now I am faced with a problem. I can't unlock the back door without getting my shoulder bag out of the saddlebag, because I once again, curse it, forgot to put the house keys into my pocket rather than leaving them in the bag. The shoulder bag, of course, takes up most of one side of the saddlebag and has been surrounded by and filled with whatever groceries I could fit in there along with it. So now I have to, with the same precision loading the damn thing up required, unload the whole #$*! saddlebag to get at the key enabling me to open the door.

For future reference, it is good policy to unload any breakable items first. I assume I don't have the list the reason.

(14) Pick up all the unloaded groceries off the ground and put them in the kitchen. Put bike in shed, lock bike, bolt shed, lock gate, lock back door, and put groceries away.

Good thing I don't have a job yet. Don't know how we're gonna eat when I get one.