Beer Run!

Of course the question you all want to know is: How much beer can a Haul-a-Day carry?

The answer is I don't really know the maximum but I can set a floor.

So I rode over to my nearby beer store. This is what I bought...

It comes to:

• 8 x 750ml Avec Les Bon Voeux
• 6 x 12oz Bear Republic Racer 5 IPA
• 6 x 12oz Ballast Point Sculpin cans
• 4 x 16oz Golden Roads Wolf in the Weeds IPA
• 1 x 750ml spoiled grape juice (a/k/a "Wine")
• 1 x 26oz distilled grain spirits (a/k/a "Booze")

It doesn't look like much in the cart, but it is a a fair amount to transport on a bicycle.

I didn't plan well enough -- I meant to bring some newspaper to wrap the bottles. We have a paper bag law and one use paper bags are 10 cents. I knew that went for grocery stores but didn't realize it was for bottle bags as well. The store gave me some cardboard inserts and using my jacket and a cloth bag I managed to get it all in and wrapped.

This was the first time I had a real load in the front basket and it worked OK. I am usually pretty good at balancing the bike with little or no forward motion  but not with a load. So long as I got a good push off it went fine. The disk brakes stopped with no issues.

It's less than two miles to the store, so it wasn't a distance test, but I am happy with how it worked. With a little better planning I could carry more but I wouldn't want to double the load.

More Haul-A-Day

So yesterday I rode off to a nearby grocery store that has "reverse vending machines" to get some bottle deposits back. So I loaded up the bike with three garbage bags of (mostly) 2-liter bottles and headed off.

When I got there, the store had removed the vending machines. It turns out the store is closing the end of the month and I guess they didn't wait to get rid of the recycle machines.

The store had big "Inventory Clearance" signs all over -- I figured there wouldn't be much in the way of groceries I wanted to buy, so I headed for another grocery store (actually closer to home but they don't have a recycling center).

I thought about just leaving the bottles at this store, figuring somebody who gathers recyclables for a living would pick them up. If I had seen anybody, I would have given them to them but just leaving them seemed like littering, so I bungie corded then to the top of the rack in the back (plus one in the basket) and took them home. The panniers are full of groceries but you can't really see that.

So I rode home like this. I got some strange looks -- I think some folks thought I was one of those who has all their belongings on their bike (we have a few of those in the neighborhood) but that is their problem, not mine...

Pat and I went out riding for lunch today and while it is not the greatest picture, you can see somewhat the relative sizes. Her bike is a New World Tourist that belonged to my father. If you look at some of the pictures from 2007, 2008 and 2010 you can see this same bike next to my NWT

Farmer's Market Run

Rode over to our nearby farmer's market (Mar Vista Farmers Market). It's about 4.5 miles round trip.

Didn't get a huge amount of veggies but more than I would have on my NWT (with the 5 lbs or oranges).

The ride yesterday was about 5 miles (we call it the "Five Mile Loop"). I haven't been riding recently and so am out of shape. Normally these I wouldn't feel these rides but the 35+ lbs of Haul-A-Day does make a difference. I'm not complaining -- that is more exercise for me -- but I won't be doing any 25+ miles rides on it any time soon.