Buying groceries
 

I'm thinking I'm going to start taking my Cypress to the grocery store, since I now often shop at Henry's, which is close by, and I now seem to shop more often, since I'm buying more fresh fish and veggies and don't like buying food that will spoil if I don't get to it quickly enough.

Anyhoo...

I have a rack aback my Cypress, but am wondering about baskets or perhaps bags to tote the groceries. Any recommendations? Should I get some kind of basket that dismounts at the store and is remounted when filled with my purchases, or something that stays on the bike?

Edit: Found this at Performance, anyone familiar with it?

Grocery bag

Why don't you just send out the houseboy?

He's too OCP

Mrs Maxx's cruiser has a large wicker basket with handles that mounts to a quick release on the front of the handlebar. Works good. Lots of jokes about "where's Toto".

I bought it at a LBS and no longer have any idea what brand it was. Items like that come and go like fads so you will just have to hunt.

What about a folding grocery rack???

http://www.amazon.com/Bicycle-Rear-G.../dp/B000BPNK7O

Edited to add: I should have looked more closely at your original idea. Looks like you're way ahead of me.

Just showed the pic of "Houseboy" to my wife. Her response? "Oh dear god...I've never seen anything uglier in my life".
I like to know just where my limits are when it comes to selecting clothing.:lol:

If your checking limits with this picture than you will need a map to get back here.

At least he's not wearing bibs or shaving his legs.

That will be very FREDilicious.:D

I know! I just realized I can realize my FRED potential on my Cypress, while expressing my OCP on the Roooooooobay. Life's great!

OK--Serious response. A simple, cheap way to do it would be to get a milk crate and secure it with bungee cords. I often shop and use my touring panniers, but that would probably be a bit pricey for you, unless you got a good deal on Craigslist. I also sometimes use a small backpack (daypack). Style points in my book for the wicker basket. But very few people read my book.

I will admit that on one of my rare trips to Wally-World, I purchased a removable front handlebar basket, with the Bell brand name, for $12. There's a great Trader Joe's store a few blocks from my office, so I'm going to use it on my lunch bike.

http://www.walmart.com/catalog/produ...uct_id=5750636

I agree with your wife:eek:

Darker clothing and less hair would be some improvement:rolleyes:

They make regular panniers for this purpose:

http://images.rei.com/media/654931.jpg

Here is an example from REI.

Of course if I had houseboy, I'd probably just send him. You know, Mr. Travis was able to pull the trigger on that picture pretty quick. Are we sure it isn't the "before" picture?

Now we know why he doesn't wear bibs

Let me tell ya!

Since I'm car less (as opposed to car free), I have to do all my shopping on a bike.
I've found a back pak works great.
Get one large enough to shoehorn a 12 pak of double thick TP and you'll have the right size!
Plan your trips so you carry some heavy items with some lighter weight items. You don't want a pak full of canned goods. It gets too heavy and strains the pak. (I came home once with 53 lbs. of stuff in the pak and hanging off the bars. WAY TOO MUCH! I now have a 30 lb. limit and try to keep it closer to 25.
Items like bags of chips etc., can be hung off the handle bars.
Heavier items like a 6 pak of pop need to be "strung". Hang them off to the side and they start swinging, messing up the steering. Hanging off both sides and they start getting into harmonics and make it virtually impossible to steer. I "string" them between my thumb shifter bosses. (not the levers)
edit:
Also anticipate your needs. If you happen to be out for whatever reason, stop by the store on your way home to pick up a couple "lighter" items. I always keep a "mental" grocery list of what I can carry without the pak. Since I've recently become a chips & salsa freak, I'll often pick up chips. It seems that when I get chips with other items, they tend to get broken up smaller.

Shows how observant most people are.


http://www.employees.org/~4roxie/images/missGulch.jpg

Good find. I had always assumed that they were right. Thanks.

Or make your own panniers.

I just use our InStep Turbo Trailer. Our daughter dearly loved it until her first ride on a Trail-A-Bike, at which point the trailer was put to work as a grocery getter. There's a nearby Harris-Teeter with lousy car parking, so it's not a bad mission. You can probably pick up a similarly outgrown trailer used for almost nothing.

Paul

Grocery Bag? Basket? How fred!

Why don't you do like I do? Ride no-handed and juggle your purchases on the way home.

You mean something like this when i bought a chair at a garage sale???

I use the basic Nashbar grocery panniers. Very similar to the Performance ones, but a few bucks cheaper. To keep from overfilling them, I shop using the store's handbasket rather than a cart. The handbasket plus a handful in the other hand (jug of milk, a couple of loaves of bread) fill them perfectly. I generally alternate between one and two-trip weeks.

A note of caution on the Cypress: When using any sort of panniers on my Cypress DX, I have heel-strike issues. To solve the problem, I use an expedition-length rack, like the Jandd Expedition, so the panniers can be mounted further towards the rear, out of the heel zone.