Cycling

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So I started the day furious and frustrated. The car free experiment for this month fell apart today and it fell apart for completely unnecessary reasons. When I left work last night, I found that both of my tires were deflated. I assumed this was some moron’s idea of a “harmless” prank. I filled the tires and successfully made my way home.  However, this morning as I prepared to head to work, I found both tires flat again which means that this pathetic excuse for a human being actually punctured both tires with something that created a slow leak, probably a thumb tack.  It was too late for me to have time to replace the tubes and make it to work on time.  After swearing and fruitlessly shaking my fist I climbed in my car and with heavy heart, drove to work.  I was sooooo close . . .  One day left and I would have done it.   Instead of a feeling of triumph and because of some small-minded imbecile with delusions of adequacy, here I am fighting with stop and go traffic and I can feel my blood pressure is rising.  “DON’T YOU KNOW HOW TO MERGE????” A headache is coming on.  I can feel that throbbing starting at the back of my head.  This is just awful . . . And just like that I had an epiphany . . .

When I lived in Chicago, grocery shopping was never really an issue.  For example, at my last apartment, my grocery story was literally 25 yards away from my back door.  Thanks to the re-opening of my local grocery store by El Mariachi, this is still true for me.  However, this isn’t the situation for most people in OKC and there are times when I need to get stuff that my local store doesn’t carry, so I thought it would be great to talk about grocery shopping by bicycle.

So far in my little experiment, I’ve really only been bicycling between home and work, which isn’t really a big change for me except that it’s my only option now.  However, because I’m now completely reliant on the bicycle to get me around, I have been attempting to make myself absolutely prepared for as many problems as possible.  I’m glad I did, since yesterday I had a nasty multiple puncture flat which thanks to equipment and planning was easily handled.  In light of this and because for some reason I’m personally always fascinated by “what’s in my bag” posts, here are my commuting bag contents: