. . . to go by bike! And by weekend, I mean four days — in addition to my usual three-day weekend, I took an extra day to eat up some comp time.
On Thursday afternoon, after a morning making tomatillo salsa and granola, I biked to the library and then on to City Greens Farmers’ Market. On my way to the market, I was wishing for a juicy, refreshing snack — fortunately, they had grapes again — big time yum! In addition to the grapes, I filled my bike crate with eggplant (soon to be baba ganoush), sweet potatoes, and green peppers.
I started Friday with a bike trip to the dentist. I survived the little girl puking in the waiting room, only for the dental hygienist to say she thought I had a little cavity. I tried to stay calm. I’ve never had a cavity before — was my clean teeth record really about to be ruined? The dentist came in, looked at my teeth, and said there was a spot I needed to brush at a different angle, but NO cavity. I’m not celebrating too much until my next regular appointment in six months, because I heard something on NPR just the other morning about how some cavities are too small to drill, so dentists wait until the get bigger to do anything about them — maybe I just have one of those?
Anyway, I left my bike locked up behind the dentist’s office and walked to Target (I try not to shop here too much — I prefer small, local businesses, but sometimes it happens). As big box stores go, this Target is rather well designed for access by something other than car. Most of the motor vehicle parking is in a garage behind the building, so I didn’t have to walk across miles and miles of surface parking to reach the store. If I’d brought my bike, they have a nice bike rack out front. Unfortunately, I failed in my mission to obtain new bike gloves. I’ve searched high and low (starting at local bike shops) for a style I like to replace my tattered and torn pair, but I keep coming up empty.
Saturday, I planned to bike to Tower Grove Farmers’ Market, mainly for the yoga. As I brought my bike up the basement stairs, it started sprinkling, which turned into a full-on, though light, rain shower. I unloaded my bike crate, carried the bike back down the stairs, and headed upstairs for a yoga video in my nice, dry apartment. Saturday afternoon we drove out to the garden, so in the end I didn’t ride my bike at all on Saturday.
On Sunday, I biked to St. Cronan’s and Local Harvest Grocery. By this point (12:30pm), I was very hungry, so I skipped my planned third stop (Schnucks, a Missouri grocery store chain) and biked home to scavenge some leftovers for lunch. I did bike to Schnucks later in the day. My bike crate is the perfect size for carrying six bottles of wine in their handy wine carrier (all Missouri wines!) plus some other grocery items.
Our preference for food suppliers, from top down, goes something like this: our garden and the farmers’ markets, stores where we can buy items in bulk (Local Harvest Grocery, Golden Grocer, Whole Foods), and then regular grocery stores, like Schnucks. Since we only buy a few things at Schnucks, and that usually when we’re stocking up on some staple item that’s on sale, the randomness of my Schnucks trips always amuse me. Vodka and organic butter. Wine and baking powder. Six bags of brown sugar and a carton of soy milk.
And so goes a lovely fall weekend!
Her Green Life 
Ha! I’ve never heard of “Schnucks”… I thought you said “Schmucks” at first! A Freudian slip perhaps?
So here’s my sad bike story. I rode to the Whole Foods for a bottle of my favorite locally produced organic milk in a glass deposit bottle. On the way home I got hit by a car while crossing a major intersection. I am fine… just a few scrapes and bruises, but my front bike wheel is toast.
Get this… I’m crossing the busy intersection with the light, and with traffic. A woman is turning left. I make sure that she sees me and stops… but then she somehow decides that since the “don’t walk” signal started to blink, I was “supposed to stop and go back!” So she decided to go and hit me before I knew what was happening!
My boyfriend always says that when you’re on a bicycle, you have to assume that every driver is actively trying to kill you… I guess he’s right!
Anyhow, the cops gave her a big fat ticket, and it will cost her much more to fix the damage to her car than it will cost me to get a new front wheel. But I’m still pissed… and to top it off, the bottle of milk shattered… guess I won’t be getting that deposit back!
All in all, I feel lucky, but I admit I’m a bit frightened to get back on the bike!
Rebecca, I’m so sorry, and I’m glad that you’re mostly okay! This is the same kind of situation where a driver hit my husband about a year ago — Matthew was proceeding straight through an intersection, clearly had the right-of-way, and an oncoming left-turning driver hit him on his bicycle. I hesitated to write much about his accident to avoid portraying bicycling as “dangerous.”
I hope the driver will be paying to fix your bicycle as well as her car! And the milk just adds insult to injury, but the most important thing is that you were able to walk away from it.
I decided it wasn’t worth the time and effort to try to make her pay restitution since I bought the bike used 20 years ago for $100. My boyfriend thinks that with a new front wheel (on order for $30) I’ll be back “on the road again” although I fear I’m going to shy away from major intersections for a while!