When my Asian side comes out...

Some (many?) of you have now realized how much I love biking. Yes, it's not something that I have been doing for years but since my time in the central part of this country, the last 2 years have been filled with multiple bike rides over varied terrain, ranging from crazy temperature differences, various elevation grades, various wardrobes...

Anyways, I digress... Today I decided to conquer this weird thing that I had about biking to this certain shopping complex for groceries. To lay out the issue at hand: this complex is at sea level, I live at 140m above sea level - this doesn't sound like much but the rise from sea level to higher elevation is quite steep - my issue was that I would be biking downhill with an empty backpack, only to have to return home with a full backpack, complete with delicate fruits and vegetables. This all changed today. After my wonderful downhill ride off of campus yesterday (it's a steep 20% gradient), I figured that I had to get some fitness in today - especially since I was spending most of the day doing coursework.

The way that I convinced myself that this was a great idea is two-fold:
1) it would be excellent training for cycling Ireland;
2) I would only buy the things that I was setting out to buy (apple juice, yoghurt, tomatoes, bananas, some other good looking fruit, bulk slivered almonds, bulk candied ginger).

Well... that plan started unraveling when I arrived at the good produce grocery store. All of a sudden I was also buying a cucumber, a demi-loaf of fig and anise bread, and the piece de resistence that really evokes my Asian side: not one but two heads of cauliflower. Why two you ask? Well, it was buy one get one free, and like all good Asian girls, the free one was to be given to my aunt and uncle.

Now, as I am packing my bag for the ride back home, I am starting to think that it's pretty heavy. Its weight only became more apparent as I had to start biking home. The hills were one thing, the lights at the top of the hills were another (I successfully made all of the lights with only one slight moment when I had to pace myself in order to avoid putting down my foot). The areas that I used to think were flat became slight inclines; bref, it was a uphill battle for the entire ride home.

Once home, out of curiosity, I had to weigh my backpack. It turns out that with the addition of the two cauli-flower heads, my backpack was weighing in at 21.5lbs - no wonder that I found the bike ride home to be not as enjoyable as the ride down.

Moral of the story: don't go for the buy one get one free when the object in question is a head of cauliflower?