today's tiny grocery run.

this is a 'tale of woe'. and yet..

i almost fell asleep on the train on my way home from work tonight. and early. by cicero i was nodding. i soooo wish i could commute to my job by bicycle, but my job is 26 miles away, through some wicked traffic and blood-curdling neighborhoods. if there were a safe route, i'd shoot for doing it once every other week, but there's not. (i didn't have my current job when we bought our house. my commute eats into the biking, but i ride public transport into chicago, and hoof it a couple of miles to work from there.)

i'd promised my spouse that i'd make a grocery run. and i wasn't driving to do it. i had one pannier -- a piece of garbage that kind of wasn't, if one thinks about the fact that i'd had it (and its partner, which gave up the ghost last year-ish) since 1992. i hated those panniers, and have new ones on order, but they haven't arrived yet.

so i ate some brown rice salad, which was almost the last immediately grabbable food in the fridge, suited up my sleepy bones, grabbed keys & the pannier, and headed out. to kramer foods in hinsdale.

hinsdale is a wealthy suburb. which makes the condition of their streets an absolute mystery. i guess the town's residents never drive their beemers on their own streets. or something. hinsdale's streets are in some kinda rough shape.

kramer foods is not the only grocery store within reasonable biking distance, but they have bell & evans chickens (which i only buy very occasionally, 'cause a whole fryer's like $3/lb, and they're giant. i think the one i bought tonight may be the first 4-lb chicken i've ever even seen in a normal grocery store). kramer foods is also a liiiittle bit farther than the jewel i've just started riding to.

in my rush to get out the door, i forgot to grab a water bottle. duh. so i had no water for the trip there, but whatever. i figured i'd buy a gatorade for my water bottle cage while i was there.

i made my tour of the store, picked up milk, skipped the oj because it was too expensive, even considering the wear & tear i was sparing the car, got a few other things -- the entire time keeping in mind how much would fit in my pannier. i'm very good with the spatial relationship between groceries and that pannier. and i found the gatorade i needed, in a cooler near the front door by the deli section. it wasn't very cold.

i paid for my stuff, and said i didn't need a bag, then volunteered to pack my own groceries. i totally nailed it as far as what would fit. it was perfect.

then i popped the top zipper on the main compartment. i had burger buns floating on top -- and no bungee cord.

sigh.

but as it happened, the strap that secured the pannier to my bike rack fit exactly between the buns. so i cinched it up as tightly as i could (not especially tight under ideal circumstances), and biked carefully over hinsdale's crummy streets.

when i got home, i tossed the pannier into the trash. now i really want those new panniers to arrive.