Hauling Apples

It happens. Biking around Tasmania on a junk shop bike, I come across stuff I’d like to take with me. But often there’s just not room.

Take the apple season. In these late summer days, wild, well, lets call them feral, apple trees drape their bounty across the dirt road shoulders. (Quick apple lingo: “feral” means you can reach them from your bike. “Someone else’s” means you have to climb across a fence and sidle up next to an apple picker. Stick with feral.)

A load of feral apples (Outside St Marys,Tasmania)

Trouble is, traveling on a bicycle, there’s only so much you can carry. And that’s if you have good bike panniers. I don’t. The two gear bags that grace the front of my bike are actually camcorder bags – and cheap ones at that. They’re designed for carrying a small, light load, not ten pounds of apples.

Then there’s the helmet. Though I should be wearing it, I wear my wide brimmed hat instead to fend off the hole in the ozone layer above Tasmania. But there are only so many apples you can pile into a cycling helmet hung off the back of your bike.

Recently, to take on a few more wild apples – and stretch the budget – I had a brainwave. Why not pull off my boots then fill my them with apples? You can pedal a bike barefoot you know. After all, you did it as a kid.

So off came the boots and into them went the apples.

And it worked. My feet got a nice tan and my belly got an even better feed of wild apples.

A boot full of wild apples (Outside St Marys,Tasmania)

Just goes to show in life, as in cycling, you don’t need loads of custom stuff. Better to head out a little hungry and imaginative and see what comes up. Even, if at the end of the day, your apples have a mild “footy” taste to them.

Good luck hauling a little extra of what you’re schlepping these days!


peta
2011-03-21 12:03:30

aaahhh.. that mildly footie tasting apple will linger in your memory for years to come Dont you know!! inspired..
peta

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