i’ve really taken to my saturday morning grocery routine at the central market. i love food (this goes without saying) and central market is nicely browseable, with samples a’plenty. it’s a nice change from the rushed after-work pitstop at Wheatsville to buy eggs or cottage cheese or whatever it is i plan to subsist on for the next night and day.
this afternoon, before drowning myself in a sea of edible bliss, i decided to visit central market’s neighbor, The Gap. i am a girl, after all, and sometimes we girls need to buy new things, just for the novelty of it all (that, and i needed a pair of sweat pants and the gap is one of the few semi-tolerable clothing shops in my radius of “bikeable Austin”).
(a temporary distraction: i’m writing this from the Flight Path, where i normally adore my light columbian roast coffee and relative anonymity, but when i walked in, a large group of people, apparently having some sort of meeting, turned and looked at me as if they were expecting me to join them. i decided i was being overly self aware and headed for the coffee counter. after finding coffee and a seat, i only then realized that the group was clearly a ‘ghey’ girl thing. i’m not sure what they’re meeting about; they don’t seem to be talking about lesbians, or vaginas, so what do lesbian clubs meet for? simple solidarity i suppose. ok, i’m talking like an asshole. really i’m just jealous. i want to be in a club! i want to be in on the scene! but i just can’t join a club based solely on sexual preference alone. sigh, yet again, i am stymied by my inability to understand the social fabric of society.)
back to groceries, cycling, and other routines i adore. as many of you know, this year i i became a full-time bicycle commuter. this has been a life-changing experience in a most positive and exciting way. since i now rely on a bicycle alone for all of my city travel, i have also discovered all sorts of life-changing bicycle accessories that i’ve come to adore.
after today’s afternoon of joyous consuming, i have to pay homage to my bicycle panniers, aka saddlebags, aka rear bicycle bags.
my panniers are red Ortlieb Backroller Classics. when i first bought them, i was a little alarmed by their design: imagine a very large plastic grocery bag, with its top open. what? no zips? i was skepticle. but it didn’t take me long to fully appreciate the simplicity of their design. two simple waterproof bags with no sub pockets to worry about, simply roll the top to close, snap them on the rear rack (which takes ~6.54 sections) and wa-la.
these bags have changed my life!
in addition to my bag of gap shopping (which included sweat pants and 3 shirts), my panniers also fit 5 bags worth of groceries:
1 dozen eggs
1 tub of yogurt
1 tub of cottage cheese
1 L of soy milk
1 bottle of wine (tempranillo)
1 pack of garden burgers
1 loaf of bread
1 pack of tortillas
1 package of pasta
1 box of cereal
2 Texas-sized grapefruit
1 orange
4 apples
2 pears
1 bunch of spinach
1 head of broccoli
1 red onion
1 green pepper
3 tomatoes
5 bananas
1 tube of toothpaste
mushrooms
granola
muesli
peanut butter
couscous
ground cumin
horseradish
cheese (feta)
my mind is officially blown. and guess what: my bike still rode like a dream.
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