Yard Saling by Bike

We used to occasionally cruise the neighborhood on our bikes over the weekend to check out yard sales. Going by bike has two advantages when yard saling: it saves gas and it also minimizes impulse buys. Well, it used to keep the impulse buys to a minimum. That's not necessarily the case anymore with the Xtracycles. Between the two of us, we can carry quite a bit!

We haven't been out to any yard sales in quite a while due to obedience training classes for the dogs. Their graduation today from Beginner class was held in the afternoon instead of morning so we finally had a free Saturday morning.

By the way, I have to share pictures from the graduation.


Doesn't Angel look scholarly? She won the obedience contest, which consisted of doing various exercises we'd learned in the class (like sit-stay, down, roll over, etc.) at different places throughout the store. Whoever got their dog to do each of these and return the fastest won a prize. Angel got a little pink squeaky toy that she is completely ignoring.


Polie looked handsome in his graduation cap as well. He was deemed "most improved" dog in the class. On the first day, he had to sit in the corner with the teacher because he was barking at the other dogs so much. We weren't sure he was going to make it through the class, but thanks to our hard work and his desire to be a welcome member of our pack, he's doing much, much better now.

But, back to the yard sale story. We headed out this morning on a couple of errands with the intention of stopping by any yard sales along the way. There were very few, perhaps because school just started. We finally found some on our way home. At one stop, I spied a couple of boxes of jars. The price was fair, not cheap but canning jars are never cheap here. I asked the woman holding the sale if she had any newspaper so we could wrap the jars to take on the bikes. With a stack of paper, we moved to a shady spot and wrapped each jar and placed it back in the box. I had no tape to hold the boxes closed but I had tucked a couple of bungee cords in the bike bag earlier. Those worked great.


The boxes fit on both sides of my bike and we continued on our way.

At the next stop, I picked up a few bras. Thanks to eating better and biking hundreds of miles this month, I am losing weight. I hate spending much money for clothes that are only going to fit briefly so I was thrilled to get these for next to nothing. Sorry, no pictures.

We mosied on to the next sale and found a couple of DVD movies at a good price. My sweetie picked up another Kurt Vonnegut book for his collection as well as a Ray Bradbury. Gotta love yard sales for cheap books and unusual selection.


At home, I unpacked the jars right away so that I will remember to wash them all. The next task, one that is a bit more time-consuming, is to construct a storage box for them. I save old boxes to cut up for dividers to protect the jars from nicks and cracks as they are moved around in the house. That will also be important for their eventual move to a new home.

We do need one other item to make yard saling by bike more convenient: some cards with information about the Xtracycles on them. People often come over to check out our bikes and it would be nice to hand out cards with the website address on them for those who are truly interested. More folks willing to haul their things on bikes means less cars on the road, and that's good for all of us. Well, not so good for the car companies or petroleum industry, but too bad for them.