On 09/25/2018 08:28 AM, Tom Wyland wrote:
What we are lacking is people feeling the need to bike 3 blocks to the grocery store instead of driving.
Honestly, how many people live within 3 blocks of a grocery store? How many even live within 3 miles of a grocery store? When you get to the grocery store, is there a place you can secure your bike while you shop? And how much of a week's shopping can you realistically carry on a bicycle?
These are not academic questions for me. Back in 2009, I got this Kogswell P/R which I set up as a porteur. At the time, there was a small supermarket a half mile from where I live. There was also a drug store in the mall. I found I could successfully carry two shopping bags of groceries on the porteur rack, as long as they weren't all cans or Gatorade bottles. The supermarket had a solid structure you could lock to, although the "bike rack" at the drug store is about as poor a rack as you can find - room only for 2 bikes, no way to secure anything but the front wheel, etc. I could take neighborhood streets to get there, no crossing main thoroughfares, and the store was small enough you could do a pick-up shop quickly.
And then the supermarket closed, and moved a couple of miles north on Rt 1. The new store has no place to park a bike, and it's huge. It'll take you several minutes just to walk around the perimeter, and a pick-up shop is not worth contemplating: it simply takes too long, even if you're driving. It feels like it's only worthwhile making the trip if you're doing a week's worth of shopping. For me, that's at least six shopping bags, most likely 100 pounds, and it's at minimum an hour's trip to and fro and time in the store. None of that is practical by bike.
I'm seriously considering selling the bike. -- Steve Palincsar Alexandria, Virginia USA -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
