Shopping for garden supplies, on the bike
I've gotten used to relying on the bike, bus, and foot for all transportation needs in the Netherlands, but it's not to say I don't long for the Prius often. As an example, I just bought three 50 lb shelving units from Ikea, and took them on three separate walking and bus trips since, you know, there's only so much you can carry yourself at once.
Another example are my trips to the garden center (tuincentrum) on the outskirts of Eindhoven. It's about 3.4 miles away from my apartment and I don't think any buses run there. So biking it is. The first time I went I came back with three pots of bamboo, and a few pots of small houseplants, and a bag of gravel, along with all of my grocery shopping for the week which I had done earlier in the day. The bags on the back of my bike actually look quite cheerful with the green bamboo shoots sticking out!
This weekend I made another trip to the tuincentrum, this time to get potting soil and fertilizer for the free tulip bulbs I got (as I wrote about here). It was a long 45L (1.6 cu ft) bag of potting soil specially recommended by the staff for bulbs. So I straddled it across the back and into both bags. Happy to report no incidents for the 3.4 mile bike ride back!
