Trash Messenger Bags FTW!

One of the drawbacks of using a bicycle for everything is that I can only buy as much groceries as I can haul on a bike, which means that I have to re-stock at regular weekly intervals. That’s actually just a really pretentious way of saying that I go grocery shopping once a week. Today was one of those days, based on my observations of lack of food in my pantry/kitchen. I decided that I had about $50 to spend on groceries this trip, so the next step was deciding where to go shopping for food. The obvious answer that requires the least physical effort on my part is to go to Whole Foods, because fifty (whole) dollars worth of (whole) food can be hauled in this:

But the obvious answer is not always the economically viable answer, so I then thought “Aha! ALDI!” This option was short-lived, because hauling $50 worth of food from that store would require me to rent this:

I don't have a CDL, so I decided to choose the happy medium and go to Cub Foods, which is where I was going to go anyway before I considered other options. I usually take my grocery/utility bike with baskets on it when I go grocery shopping, but since I recently bought a Trash Messenger Bag I decided to do what everyone does with a messenger bag - fill it with stupid amounts of stuff. So I hopped on my normal bike with no baskets and went late-night grocery shopping at Cub.

Twenty minutes and fifty pounds of food later I was riding my bike home, experiencing what it would feel like for a dude with a 50lb beer gut to ride my saddle. After making a mental note to be considerate of others, I turned my attention to my vertebrae, who were all yelling at me at a volume I hadn’t heard since that one time in a high school wrestling meet when I got lifted up and dropped and pinned by a south-Asian Arnold Schwarzenegger. My back reminded me there is a reason why people buy cargo bikes in favor of large bags. Also, the print-out that came with my bag now made more sense:

I did make it home safely, however, and for your viewing pleasure (and Trash Bag promotion) decided to take a few pictures of just how much stuff you can fit in these top-quality bags. The craftsmanship is superb, the bag is really comfortable across your shoulder, and Andy, the CEO/President/sweatshop employee of Trash Bags, is a really great guy to work with. Feel free to check out the website while I go and reserve a massage and make sure that my fridge is well-stocked for the coming week.

_DZ

Solving Pantslessness and Inquiring Into Transportation-Specific Wardrobe Choices

In the last month or so I have become the proud owner of two pair of wool pants. This is unusual for me, because I hate pants shopping like teenagers hate braces. I like to keep my pants-buying activities relegated to A) special occasions or B) in response to sudden unexpected bouts of pantslessness. But recently I bought two pairs of wool pants for completely different reasons.

My motivations behind buying wool pants, and my delight in discovering new bonus features that these pants provide, have lead me to think a lot about how transportation influences and molds our clothing choices and habits. Since pretty much every one in America drives a car, transportation-specific clothing choices - even those that coincide with car travel - often go unnoticed.

I bought wool pants for three reasons: they are warm, they shed water, and they keep you warm even when they are soaked with water. Basically I bought them for when I have to ride my bicycle in the rain. My wool pants are great for this, but they have other features of which I was unaware until I started wearing them regularly. First, they are incredibly comfortable when riding my bicycle. The fabric doesn’t rub or chafe the inside of my thigh when I pedal, nor does it bunch up in the crotch or flap into the chain. That is really nice. And secondly, since the fabric is a charcoal-grey color, even after a full day's work in a greasy bike shop, the pants don’t look dirty. They look just, well, like normal wool pants.

And how much did I pay for these features, you ask? Did I follow some minimalist principles and save money while maximizing value? Or, to put it in fancy-shcmancy terms, did I forgo acquiring a liability in favor of enhancing my life with an asset? Yes, yes I did. The two pair of pants cost me less than $5 each. Wool pants are easy to buy used because, even though my local Goodwill arranges their pants by number of belt loops, because they have a different texture. I can walk down the store aisle at a normal pace, feel all the pants as I go by, and know without visual confirmation when I find what I am looking for.

There are some aisles of Goodwill clothing that I can skip all together. Fancy jackets, for example, or sweaters or polo shirts. My wardrobe is noticeably ebbing towards more cycling-specific clothing, just as some of the clothing that the general public now wears is actually car-specific. This article from the BBC talks about the decline of fancy hats coinciding with the rise in car culture, and you can say the same thing with coats. People used to wear huge overcoats in the winter to keep warm, but once cars became the norm, people found that their huge coat got in the way of getting in and out of cars, not to mention all of the bunching up it had to do when they sat down. And since the cars were heated anyway, there was no need for such a huge coat - just walk quickly from warm place to warm place.

Footwear is another issue. People can wear sandals everywhere only if they walk, use public transport, or drive a car with an automatic transmission. Operating a clutch pedal with sandals is a pain, as is riding a bicycle with them on. I don’t wear sandals much anymore because they don’t give a good platform for my feet to push down on when I pedal and because they are open-toed and hence kind of dangerous.

This gravitation towards cycling-spscific clothing does have its downsides, though. Wool pants should be dry-cleaned and are really hot in even mild weather. On hotter days my clothing gets soaked in sweat, requiring me to take a second shirt along at the very least. Deodorant needs to be kept in the backpack, along with perhaps some extra socks. Having to wear shoes all the time can be a pain. I can’t really wear fancy hats, either. All of that, however, is a small price to pay for the joy that bicycling gives me.

Riding a bicycle everywhere has allowed me to see clothing in a new way. Function tends to follow form in cycling, and comfort while riding is key. After all, transportation is a major part of our daily lives, and discomfort there will affect other spheres of social life. Stumbling upon new ways of seeing things is awesome, and as I continue to move at the speed of bike, hopefully discovering wool pants will just be the beginning.

_DZ

A Stolen Bicycle and The Supremacy of God

*Sigh
So someone stole my fixed-gear black track bike, my $400 Bianchi Pista, off my porch last night. I had the bike for a little over a year, and for most of that time it was my only bike. I rode it everywhere. I got comments from everyone who saw it, and I was pretty proud of it. My porch is enclosed and there’s no way to see it from the street, so I can only assume that the person who took it knew that the bike was there. Maybe it was even someone I know. This sense of premeditated violation is I guess what bugs me the most. It wasn’t some impulsive action brought on by seeing a nice bike on the street - that’s still not very nice but is a little easier to deal with. This was planned out. I’ve never had anything remotely valuable stolen form me (the last thing I can remember was my Razor scooter in tenth grade), so this is kind of a first for me. I hope my bike is OK, and that the new owner is treating it well.


I should have every right to be mad about it, right? After all, it was a relatively expensive purchase and I loved the bike. And someone DID violate my personal space, as they had to open a door to get on my porch. Someone took something that wasn’t theirs, and I should be mad about it. I lost a monetary investment and a mode of transportation. I also lost my opportunity to ride on the velodrome in Blaine in the conceivable future.


On the other hand, though, I had a nice bike that I didn’t deserve that I bought with money from a job that I didn’t deserve. It was a nicer bike than I needed to have. Taking it to race on the track is a luxury in which few people in the world can afford to indulge. Riding brakeless around the city was a youthful passion rather disregarding of the perilous position into which I was placing myself. Spending $400 on a bike probably wasn’t the best use of the resources that God has given me. God gave, I enjoyed, and God took away. I guess I don’t see how any righteous indignation on my part is in order.

More importantly, perhaps, the bike was a source of pride for me. I was proud that I could afford it. I was proud with how well I could ride it. I was proud with how clean I kept it. Like I said, it elicited many compliments from those around me, which made me feel good. With every, “Hey, nice bike!” I heard I secretly added, “Wow, you are pretty cool to have such a good taste in bikes!”


And see, that is completely untrue. I didn’t even know what a fixed-gear bike was when I bought my Pista. I just knew that if I spent $400, I could get a good bike. It wasn’t a conscious decision to end up with the bike I did. But I wasn’t going to let that stop me from soaking up praise.

But perhaps God wanted me to have the bike? What if God was blessing me with it? Maybe He was, but I certainly wasn’t humble about it. As author and pastor John Piper puts it, our purpose in life is to magnify the glory and supremacy of Jesus Christ to the world - to be lights that show how infinitely worthy Christ is. If Christ blesses me, it is to show that He is an infinitely glorious God worthy of all my praise and so much more. Is owning nice things like a Bianchi bike bad? No. But when was the last time God was glorified because I rode a Bianchi? I’m ashamed to say, probably never.



So like I said before, God gave, I enjoyed, and God took away. I have nothing to be angry over. God did it for a reason, and I believe that that reason is in my best interest, even if I don’t understand it right now. That’s part of what makes God so great, though - that He is able to work for my good in ways that don’t make sense or are even painful for me.

But perhaps part of God’s plan is me getting my bike back, in which case, if you know anything about it, please let me know. I would really like it back.

_DZ