yes, as a matter of fact we do.

I am back from New Mexico and still thinking over what I observed.  In the mean time I give you a teeny tiny cycling adventure.  One of the things I like best about bicycling is that even a middle-aged shmoe like myself can enjoy daily adventures if she has a bicycle.

Monday the Contraption Captain and I are both off from work.  Rapunzel is over at a friend's house.  Sparkle Pony is visiting a friend of her own.  I think about a few things I want to do (get new chairs for the dining room, bicycle) and put them together "let's get some new chairs and bring them home on our bicycles."

Contraption Captain loves the idea.

We go to the garage and consider our options.  The Extracycle has potent carrier capacity but it's panniers are more in line with a trip to the grocery store.  We have an uber-cheap flimsy but actually pretty useful utility wagon and we put that on my road bike.  Then we put the Burley wagon on Contraption Captain's Tour Easy (recumbent.)  Then we bicycle out to the furniture store.

At the furniture store we sit in a lot of different chairs.  We settle on a particular variety that comes in green, cream, brown, or red.  The sales person refers to these chairs as coming in lemongrass, eggshell, mahogany, and russet.   I tell Contraption Captain (and anyone else that will listen over the course of the day) that no one ever calls the green they are selling "mucus" as in "we have this chair in mucus."  I think it would be kind of punk if someone just went for it and sold chairs in "mucus, grubby, catbox brown, and...period."

In the end they found two more chairs in "Indigo" and we bought those.

"Bread mold" I think to myself.  "Bread mold blue."
"This is why Chafed can't have nice things" you think to yourself.  You are probably right.

So we pay and exit the store and get our bicycles and ride them around to where you pick up the furniture you have just paid for.  It is a big loading dock area.  We pedal in and park, our bicycles dwarfed by the huge space.  Contraption rings a bell and after a moment The Guy comes out.  He surveys our bicycles impassively.  Meanwhile a minivan arrives and starts to pull into the loading dock, sees us, considers, and backs out again.  We consider some ourselves and move our bicycles onto the sidewalk.  Minivan pulls back in.

The chairs are in giant boxes.  Awkward.  Contraption signs a waiver and then The Guy unboxes the chairs.  We put one and then the other into our two wagons and then The Guy brings over twine to secure them as we forgot bungee cords.

The Guy:  "You have a vision."
Contraption Captain:  "Yes, we do."

We pedal home with our two new chairs.  It's fabulous.  How come?  I don't know.  I don't know.  Being able to carry things with your bicycle is just fantastic though.  Fun.  Satisfying.  And when you get home and park your bicycles you have two nice new comfortable chairs and you can sit down and put up your feet and rest.