Life without car and a backpack to shop for food in town ..

I have bought this up on another forum and got some pretty good also some pretty strange answers to this one basic question ..

If gas went up to the price of $10.oo dollars or more for a gallon of a gas could you as a person who lived and worked without a vehicle to drive in one life ..most medium sized town has a major grocery chain store to get the basic supplies that can not be growen or you need to have at the house ..

Using only a hiking backpack and your feet as the basic means of getting around in the area ..once a weekly shopping trips into town for the food items that you need

Plus, using public transport to get back and forth to work if it around or a bicycle to get around in the area ..

I have been doing this a while now with me going on sat morning to the store for food and carrying it back to my place inside a hiking backpack loaded up with the food items inside the pack. I normal do it about 5.am in the morning to cool outside for the frozen food items and buy that week list of foods. its about hour and half time frame for the trip from start to finish with the walk there and shopping and walk home. I do use a MP3 player with some hard rock for the walking music to keep the heart rate up and going for the walk home

Most of the items are packed into the pack with the eggs and bread are double bagged and carried home in the hands to keep them from getting crushed ..

Plus for a lot of the trips i have not been driving the car as much and walking more to get around the area where i live to go the so called local greasy spoon to eat or the bookstore that not far from me and the local farmer market also down the road about a mile

In AZ and not that far from town and i have done it in two hour time frame into town using a old trail i know that goes into town and I am going to try it next week with the bigger pack not the small day pack with the camel-back system that i did it with that day for fun with a friend ....

So could you live and work and be able to survive as a person doing that type of life without a vehicle ....

 

if i and everyone else around here were on foot, i dont think i would go anywhere near town. if it were just me without car. i could either walk the 5 miles there and 5 back taking a whole day, or just ride the horses, after all thats the only reason i have them. tp doesnt weigh very much. i can get the rest within half mile or less of home.

 

But your thinking and alot of the people who said i would just drive the car into town to shop and when i asked them that does cut into the money need for food or gas for getting into work to make a liveing ..

as person said i would do my shopping on the last day of work and shop afterwork and do the shopping like my mom and dad did but he trying to think in a way to stop useing the vehicle as much

that the whole point of the post is how to think about not useing a item when the price to use that item is way to high as it is in the future

 

My only vehicle was broke down and I had to walk 3 miles one way to the nearest grocery store and then back again with all those groceries, plus I was carrying my youngest son ( 1 1/2 at the time) all the while...That went on for a 2 week stint before I could buy the parts to get myself back onto wheels. Now I know why my sciatica is destroyed!
Next time I'll use a cart of some type and the son, ( now 21), will be carrying me!

 

I've never done that before but back when I was in college working on my BS I only had a motorcycle and lived off campus so I used to do my shopping with a backpack that way. Fortunately it was a warm state. I couldn't ride year round up here. Brrr.

 

Bike. I'm outfitted with Panniers, front and back. While its feasible for me to pack it in on my back, I'm strong enough on my bikes to take multiple routes, including single-tracks, and limit my exposure. I'm aslo strong enough to get up to speed and out run someone on foot. However, with the extra weight and bulk on the bike, if I am intercepted and knocked hard, I'm going down. To me, its still the best alternative to a petroleum powered vehicle.

If I was pack it in on my back, I think I would prefer an open frame pack with something like a cargo net on it. Strong enough to keep the items from shifting around, but configurable enough to fit the sizes of the load. Just a thought.

 

It's a 100 mile round trip into town for groceries. We do it like in the frontier days, 2 or 3 families carpool in a 4X4 Suburban. Room for 6 people and all the necessary stuff to get us through a month. Trying to backpack a month's worth of groceries alone is not viable. We visit the hardware store, the feed store, the auto parts store, and take care of any misc. tasks as well as the groceries. It's an all day job, then the hard part starts when we get home and have to put all the stuff away! You have to plan ahead and not run out of any necessary thing. There is a Mom & Pop local store, but the prices are beyond outrageous, so we don't shop there.

 

Start a Co-op with others in the community.... send a truck with a trailer to do the pickups... with the possibility of adding some outriders if necessary on motorcycles....

 

We had talked about doing that intill one person who was going to paid to be the driver was smoker got his thing in a uproar over not beenig able to smoke inside the vehicle with five other people who did not smoke..When told he could smoke inside the vehicle he became a total-a$$ about the rule ad threw a fit over it and when i told him the reason why he just walked off and give me the fringer .

I basically told the guy that i did not want to smell like cig smoke and have to breath it on a trip into town and it my truck you driveig so it my rules on smokeing inside the vehicle and it a non smokeing vehicles for these trips and you want to work for me you have to follow the rules about not smokeing inside the vehicle ..

I owned the pick up a dually set up with crew cab and a camper top on the bed of the vehicle and we are going to design the bed with cargo slots for each person to put in the grocery bags or supplies ito the cargo slots and that way it not mixed up with other people stuff ..

or

A small School bus with bult in lockable rack system in the rear of the bus with the rear seats taken out for a wire cover steel rack system for storage of supplies and you have the key and when you get to the house you unlock the unit and take your supplies as need ..with the unit loaded through the rear by the driver helping you load the supplies into the rack unit ..

Here in the near future my night driveing problems are going to come to a full head and i'm not going to be able to drive at night or maybe be allowed to drive at all ..So i was thinking of a basic service for the non drivers in the area to go into town on tues or thurs dureing the week ..

I have talked to a local girl who work out perfectly for the job and i'm going to talk to her again here in the future about the job..

 

I have a wal-mart backpack that i bought and it a saight tube type pack and i can pack in the week worth of food into the pack without a problem

here is the weekly food list for me and i'm single and the only cooking i do is for me and i will take a lunch with me for work when iam going to be there for 6 hours or more to have something to eat when iam there

loaf of wheat bread-x-2
package of bagel-x-1
package of english muffins-x-1

meats
package of boneless chicken breast-x-1-
package of hambuger 5.pds sized for makeing up meats for the meals and hambugers patties .the meat is broken down into half pd sized packages-x-1
package of hotdog-x-1-
package of steaks-x-1

lunch meats
1/2.pd of deli bolgana
1/2.pd of deli roast beef
1/2pd of deli ham

misc food items
crate of eggs -x-1-
package of chesse slices-x-1-
box of mash potatoes mix-1
boxs of mac and chesse mix-3-
yogurt -x-6-diff type
boxs of cereal -x-1
packages of spaghetti angel hair-x-2-
cans of the spaghetti sauce-x-2-
cans of chili-x-4-
box of salttines crackers-x-1-
box of ritz snack crackers-x-1-
package of salad mix makeing-x-1
bottle of salad dressing i like-x-1-
small jar of instast coffee powder-x-1-
bottle of the non draiy creamer powder-x-1-
box of earl grey tea bags-x-1-
box of the lipton cold brew tea bags-x-1-
2.lt of diet pepsi-x-4-
diff snacks i like-x-1-each
apples-x-5-
oranges-x-5
bananas -x-6-

then the once a month type items i buy for use at the house

bottle of ketchup-x-1
bottle of mustard-x-1
bottle of steak sauce-x-1-
tub of cream chesse for the bagels-x-1-
jar of peanut butter-x-1-
jar of strawberry jam sugar free-x-1-
tub of butter -x-1
jar of mayo-x-1-
bag of spendla sugar replacement -x-2-
box of powder milk for makeing up milk as it need-x-1-
bottle of pancake syrup-x-1
box of pancake powder -x-1-

misc items for a once a month shopping for me
bottle of dishwashing -x-1-
papertowels-x-1-
toliet paper-x-4-pack-x-1-
bottle of hand soap -x-1-

plus items like grooming or cleaners are gotten as they are need and run off from the 99.cent store or the local drug store that carrys my brand of grooming items for somethings like bathsoap and shaveing cream and razor i can find at the store but some of the other things i have to go to the local drug store to find them..


the meat is double bagged to stop it from leaking and the heavyest items are put on the bottom for the wieght problems with the meats and other soft items are on the outside area of the bag with the boxs on inside of the stacking system i do with the items inside the pack ...

then i pack the backpack from the soda on the bottom and rest is packed into protect the sides of the pack from haveing a box wear a hole in the fabic ..So far it has worked like a charm for a mile and half walk to and from the house to the store and back to the house.

 

an interesting thread

 

Hank , Smoker is / was a Jerk .
Ex smoker Sloth, & still I can be outside with them , but NEVER ENCLOSED !!
I musta taste like crap kissing gurls .

Sloth

 

Have done so, on and off, for many years. I have found that a bike with panniers is useful.

 

I tell dragons to get in the bed of the truck and smoke away!
Either that or they can wait to kill themselves later, I have no desire to join them in a slow death.

 

If gas get's to $10.a gallon, food will be out of sight for a lot of people, along with any other reason people might venture to town in the past.
Gas goes up, so does every thing else. .
If you've not been putting food and water away now, nor growing a garden, and it happens tomorrow ,you are in big trouble.

 

This thread reminded me of what I did for a while. I used to deliver the groceries to a store about 50 miles from the house. While they unloaded the truck, I did the grocery shopping and put the food in the Semi. I had a 12 volt cooler so keeping stuff cold was not a problem. When I got to the terminal, I was going home, so I basically was using my time and the company's fuel (that they had to burn anyway) to get the job done.

 

It just goes to show, that for every problem/challenge in life, there is often a creative solution to be found to resolve it: The art is in giving the challenge/problem some creative thought to arrive at the necessary creative solution.

 

Funny is I'm living in frenso now for work and I'm doing that. Ow but work is a block away my place and grocery store is right next door to my placed
So it a easily walk for me and to do the backpack trip to the store

 

Good for you! Much of the country used to be that way, you could walk to work, shops, and museums or theaters. Life was simpler then.

 

I would have to give up on modern society, and hit the woods, or get a horse to take to town. I take a lot of feeding, and I can tell you that I would have to make multiple trips into town for food each week.

I would also point out that if gas goes up, so does the cost of food...