We did it! Don and I rode bikes to the grocery store! (This was actually the plan for the bike I was given from the first.) On Saturday, Don cruised Craig's List while I was out a Women's Brunch at church to find himself a bike so he could keep up with me. The fellow who sold him the bike also had one of those baby carriers that hook on to the back of a bike for hauling little people along behind. Don thought the baby buggy-thing could be the answer to my quandary regarding exactly how I could carry a load of groceries on a bicycle. He arrived home with both a bike for himself to ride and the baby carrier-thing for me to haul groceries. (Our "babies" are old enough that I do not know what to call this brilliant thingy. We were not active when we had babies, so if these things were around then I would not have cared.)
Yesterday we finally got around to attempting the ride up our moderately busy neighborhood thoroughfare. Fortunately there are wide sidewalks running the length of the street from our little enclave to the grocery store a couple of miles away. It took us fifteen minutes to get there, we filled our cart with everything we remembered needing, checked out, and rode back home in a slightly extended 16 minutes. (That extra minute was me. I refused to ride any further uphill at one point, so I got off and walked along for a moment. Stubborn much?) The whole trip took about 50 minutes. By car, similar trips take about 45 minutes.
I'm cautiously excited about the prospect of decreasing one of our areas of dependence on the car. The baby buggy can hold up to 100 pounds, and we just stuck a small cooler with ice in it for cold and frozen items so it should work well for our repeated supplementary trips throughout the week although "big" trips will still be made by car.
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