Shopping with Basil

So far I haven't loaded up both my Basil bags with groceries, but we went for an early morning cycle today when the dew was still on the grass and the sun was low and gently warm. Everything felt newly-minted, there were no cars on the roads and the weekend noises of leafblowers and lawnmowers hadn't stared. I had the Postmenbag attached to Penelope as we needed to pick up a few things after our ride - namely 1.25 litres of soda water (in this hot weather it's bliss with ice, grown-up lime cordial and a squeeze and slice of fresh lime) and fruit/veg, in particular mangoes for our breakfast.

I'm desperately unfit at the moment - that's another story - and after a 45 minute cycle it was slightly hard going pedalling up the hills to our place with about 4kg of shopping on board. Not that the weight made any difference to the bike, her balance or handling; she was very stable and I didn't notice the bag was even there except that the last hill was a real bugger!

Here's my little haul of groceries; there was still plenty of room in the bag but not plenty of use left in my unfit legs so we stopped after getting these essentials. My husband doesn't have a front or rear rack on his bike so the load was all mine. Penelope weighs 20 kg so with the shopping my bike was precisely twice as heavy as my husband's. No wonder he powered up the hill ahead of me. Next time I'm putting a backpack on him so he can have some load too!

How do I know this was 4kg? I didn't do anything scientific such as put it on the scales. That's too much hard work. I used the Animal Method. If we want to get a rough idea of how much something weighs, we compare it to one of our pets. The dog weighs 10kg, the Birman boycat 6.5/7kg and the Birman girlcat 4.5 kg. It felt about the same as the girlcat when I picked her up and then the bag. :-)

As for the unfitness, I might have to head to the gym for a bit as well as ride some more. I caught a bug six weeks ago and felt like crap for almost a month. I still have the cough. Then the weather was either too hot or too wet to go riding. Wimp? Yes, unashamedly. Any fitness I had ran away and joined the circus, where it would have been appreciated. T'other half and I keep muttering that we should ride each morning before breakfast, but so rarely do. It's so hot and humid at nights at the moment we both have broken sleep and wake up late, all bleary-eyed.

Basil Bags - initial thoughts

I was a greedy pig over Christmas and bought myself not one but two Basil bike bags for Christmas.

I'd been taken with the super olive green design on the Postmenbag, but decided initially to get a Basil Mirte shopping bag (slightly bigger) in Rose, which Penelope Pashley is wearing below.

Having ordered that I then saw an olive green Postmenbag for a good price on eBay and splurged on that too. Both bags have arrived now and I have used the Postmenbag today for a very small shopping trip.

Initial thoughts are the quality is excellent. Well stitched, well lined. The white detachable strap on the Postmenbag offers lots of opportunities to get dirty, but I think could easily be cleaned by soaking it in Napisan or any other nappy wash product (no, I don't have kids, but these products are great stain removers). Cleaning the white binding around the bag, as it's bound to get dirty, would be a job for Orange Power upholstery cleaner. Only available in Australia at the moment but absolutely brilliant on fabrics as well as carpet and sofas. Digressing, my husband regularly drops chocolate on our white sofa and Orange Power gets rid of it in a flash.

My brother-in-law has used cycling as his preferred form of transport since a teen (doesn't and won't own a car), and has had experience with all manner of bags. Bearing in mind the comments on the interweb about the plastic clips breaking, he had this to say once I'd shown him photos of the bags: "Those clips look familiar, and should be good for a few years unless they get very cold. And they appear to be removable/replaceable. Karrimore used to use alloy clips and they broke with great ease. Their plastics were an improvement..."

Very cold isn't likely to happen where I'm living. And while the bags don't look huge, they do carry more than you think they might. I think loading them to the point where the clips would break would make for a slow cycle back home in my case. The hills would be murder. In short I can do grocery runs for two people a couple of times a week with these bags. Easy peasy.

Talking of the clips, they fit easily onto the Plescher rack of the Pashley. Top tip is to feed the velcro strap underneath first otherwise you fumble a bit trying to loop it around. I'm guessing the velcro is merely insurance, but did find it difficult to do it up tightly, ie to a point where I felt it could hold the bag on for a little while if the clips ever broke (just till I got off the bike and slung the bag over my shoulder).

On today's shopping trip I only had to get a kilo of Cat's Delight (yes, the local pet food shop guy actually calls it that) for They Who Have Claws, and a packet of tea, without which I will have trouble functioning. I popped the Postmenbag on Penelope and set off. The bag sits well on the rack, doesn't rattle, doesn't interfere with the spokes. Here's what my shopping looks like in the bag. You can see there is a ton of room still there in this 12 litre bag. The goodies rattle around near the bottom.

Laden with this little haul plus a full 750ml water bottle in the bag, I headed home and the bag stayed secure and didn't move on the rack. Unlike my rear basket which tends to slide towards the back of Penelope's rack!

The Postmenbag closes with a flap and a clip; the Mirte with a zipper. I can see it would be very easy to transport objects like celery and leeks in the Postmenbag. It's deep enough for them to go in at an angle with their tops sticking out, and not overbalance and fall out of the bag. Likewise with the Mirte you can zip them into an attention stance, again with their tops out of the bag unless you buy very small leeks.

As both my bikes have racks, I tried the bags on Petunia as well. She looks pretty funky with the green bag - surfer bike!

It fits nicely on her rack and rests against the struts with no danger that I can see of interfering with the wheel.

She looks a little strange with the Mirte bag though - it's definitely more a Pashley bag I think.

And for not only aesthetic reasons. Laden with full baskets, both bikes behave very differently. Petunia has a distinct unsteadiness, a slight wobble at slow speed that Penelope doesn't. However, I will try a shopping trip using both baskets to simulate a pannier situation and therefore lower centre of gravity with Petunia and see if the ride improves. After all she's a touring bike and built to carry panniers. Maybe it's the weight on top of the rack in the form of a full rear basket that makes her very twitchy. Penelope, on the other hand, with her weighty steel body and innate steadiness, handles laden baskets back and front with barely a shimmer.

More thoughts forthcoming after a bigger shopping trip using both bags. But initially I'm impressed with the quality and capacity of the bags.

Summer's day, flowing skirt

This week t'other half and I made a pledge that no matter what we needed at the shopping centre, we were cycling there to get it. It's bedlam this time of year if you drive a car there. Harassed mothers with carsful of children wanting to see Santa Claus; equally harassed mothers pushing overladen trolleys in every direction and hanging desperately onto screaming toddlers; cars circling around and around in the heat trying to find a place. You can leave our place on two wheels and be chaining your bike up inside ten minutes, and that's cycling slowly. No traffic, no waiting around to find a park. The parking angel is always looking kindly on you when you cycle there.

I had to go down there today to get my eyes tested. I've seen a gorgeous pair of frames at half price and needed to know my prescription was still valid. It was. Not that that's relevant to this story.

Anyway, I'm a big wimp when it comes to cycling at temps above 30 celsius, and our neighbour's outdoor thermometer registered 35 when I set off on Penelope. Ugh. However... despite the helmet I stayed cool as whizzed along in the slight breeze; movement itself cooled me down, and if I sweated a little the air rushing past my damp skin did the trick. Now I'm home again I'm BOILING though - it was that last push up that last hill that did it!

Today I chose to wear a long, full skirt of fine, light cotton. I've never cycled in this one before, and it did what full skirts did and blew everywhere. Not to worry; I tucked it firmly under my backside as I sat on the saddle. I also, because nobody should be subjected to a glimpse of these thunder thighs, wore a pair of lightweight bike short-type pants underneath :-).

I usually wear an old pair of prescription RayBans when I cycle in case they fall off; they're so old it's no big deal. Today though, in honour of the pretty skirt, I wore my usual sunnies, vintage 1950s cats' eye frames with my prescription lenses. I love these frames. I bought them two years ago at a vintage clothing fair and it was clear from their condition they had never been used. They'd just sat in someone's drawer, waiting for me to find them and put them to loving use.

As you can see they have diamantes on the cats' eye edges. Gorgeous!

There's a storm outside now, so I've just got back in time. Big spots of rain are splodging against the window. Nice! Think I'll go and stand in the rain for a bit and cool down :-)

How hard can it be... (3)

Yay, one of my recalcitrant clients has finally paid me for a job I did six months ago. It's not a fortune, but I'm so delighted that I'm going to splurge a bit of it on a Basil shopper bag. I've been admiring the bags and panniers for months and thought I'd settled on something fairly quiet and tasteful, which would blend in nicely with both Penelope and Petunia, viz:

Then I got thinking. Did I really want to leave expensive panniers like this on my bike while I'm at the supermarket? I heard a horror story from the pet food shop guy today, when I walked in with my helmet still on to buy the cats a week's worth of meat. "Have you tied your bike up?" he said, and I nodded. "Good, because a few days ago a guy left his bike outside and was in here for less than a minute. His bike was gone when he went out." That's the kind of suburb we live in at the moment; if it ain't tied down it's gone, and I could just imagine someone unbuckling those rather nice panniers and bolting with them. And if I got them I'd still have to take shopping bags with me anyway into the supermarket, and then decant them into the panniers. These particular panniers take about 15 litres each.

And that's when I saw the new 2010 range for Australia on the Gazelle website. Gazelle imports the Basil range and while this year's range has been basic it's been expanded nicely for next year. The Mirte shoppers hold 16 litres and this one below just resonated with me.

It's unashamedly girly, and not at all what I was originally looking for in terms of colour for my shopping bag, but I've fallen for it. It clips neatly on and off the rear pannier rack so I can take it into the supermarket and fill it up. I usually wear a little rucksack on my shopping trip for more delicate squashable things, and I have the front basket too, so should be able to comfortably do a grocery shop with all that lot combined.

I rang Gazelle, who are the wholesalers for Australia, and was told I'd have to order it through a bike shop. I mentioned the one we go to for tyre changes and other bits and pieces, and Alex at Gazelle suggested I talk to them and order the bag through them. They have three shops, and I have seen Gazelle bikes in the metal at the biggest of the shops 8km away.

How hard can it be?

Danny, the guy at my local shop 3km away, had never heard of Gazelle or Basil when I rang him. This is a shop which sells a lot of mountain bikes and BMXs. I did see one cruiser in there last time I visited. It's a blokey sort of place though. I explained the story so far to him and that his company did retail Gazelle and Basil. Finally I persuaded him to ring the bigger store and talk to them; at this point I was thinking, "oh hell, stop trying to support the local economy, just buy one from the UK or US on eBay as you'll pay about the same and heaven only knows it'll be an easier process" and wondering if the guy on the other end of the phone did actually believe me and there was truly a brand of bike called Gazelle.

Danny rang back five minutes later, stunned and excited. Yes, the big shop did sell Gazelle and did I know how much the bikes went for? Why, there was one there for $1800; pricey eh? And that wasn't the most expensive. Which model did I want him to order for me? Again, patiently, I explained I wasn't after the bike, I was after the bag, and the Gazelle importer imported the bags as well. Deflated, he finally understood and took the model number for the Mirte bag. However, as I'd investigated Gazelle before buying Penelope Pashley I had a chat to him about the bikes and how lovely they were, if definitely out of my price range (especially the one I'd been eyeballing). He's now going to treat himself to a test ride next time he's down at the big shop.

So it was a bit of an effort, but I've ordered the bag. It should arrive in Australia in about 2 weeks' time. I hope I've done the right thing and shouldn't have got the panniers after all! But no, at the thought of having to ring up and change the order... and just in case Danny's out and I have to speak to someone else and start all over again... AARRRGHH!!! :-))

Kitted out for a ride to the grocery store

Curse this workload!! It's far too nice a day. I'm glad I worked a bit over the long weekend as the sun was still shining today at lunchtime - so I persuaded t'other half that we should ride to the shops to pick up a few groceries. I ride there when we only need enough things to fill a bike basket or two; one front, one rear. It's an excuse to get out in the fresh air and get some exercise, and is better than taking the car out for just one or two items. (Unless the one item is an economy pack of 16 loo rolls or something!)

Last year I bought a very useful detachable rear basket for Petunia, which looks even better on Penelope. It's plastic wicker, with a handle so you can detach it and carry it into the shops. The handle has an unfortunate habit of bouncing from the back of the basket to the front and when I'm on Petunia, whose luggage rack slopes towards the saddle, hits me on the backside.

Penelope's luggage rack is nice and flat, so the basket itself stays where you put it instead of sliding forward, and if the handle bounces my bum is well forward of it anyway.

Below is a closeup of how it attaches - you simply pull handles on each side underneath to compress the springs, and let go so it grips on. It's a neat little unit, weighs a kilo and a bit, carries quite a lot and is very stable. Sadly there's no cover on the top, so I usually put an eco shopping bag inside and tie the handles together to stop anything bouncing out.

The basket cost me $39 on eBay. I've seen them for more in the shops, even allowing for eBay postage.

Today was the first time I've needed to put the rear basket on Penelope, and she carried a good load of fruit, veg and meat back from the shops. I hardly noticed the basket was there despite the extra weight - she is so lovely to ride!

My husband doesn't have any racks on his bike - a smug 12kg road bike with no mudguards - so carries his load in a backpack as he did today. Even if we fitted racks to his bike I can't quite see him with a twee basket like mine :-). Might have to persuade him to fit racks and buy panniers, so we can shop by bike more often and do most of the grocery load that way.