Baby you can drive my cart...

So, Tim and I had our first grocery-trip-in-the-city experience yesterday. Normally, I wouldn't consider buying groceries anything worth blogging about, but honestly, buying groceries was on my top-five all time list of concerns about living in the city (along with: missing my family and friends, the fact that I don't like big cities, getting a job and getting into graduate school, and Tim finding a smarter girlfriend at GW).

We didn't bring the car to DC because it's simply outrageous how much parking costs and how difficult it is to get around. I'm the kind of person who likes to make GIGANTIC grocery trips. I absolutely LOVE grocery shopping. Grocery stores among of my favorite places on earth, besides the woods, any body of water, bookstores and my bed. I still grocery shop like I live in the sticks, where you make one trip "To Town" every few weeks and get everything you need, really load up.

You can imagine that the idea of stopping by the store every day or every few days really rains on my parade: going to the grocery store should be a grand event, not a daily chore.

So Tim and I have been trying to decide how to negotiate the grocery store trip. Do we get a Zipcar membership, which feels a little like chickening out? Do we give in and become one-bag-a-day shoppers? Do we order all our non-perishables on-line? Yesterday we settled on buying a grocery buggy... a little cart with wheels and a handle, which you can cart your stuff home in on the Metro and then fold up and store at home. (Mind you, the folding up bit is very important in a 1BR apartment that is already packed, I mean PACKED to the gills.)

We try out our first grocery store, a Safeway out in the Suburbs, two metro stops away from us. We walk through a tunnel absolutely inundated with urine, past a man who appears to be either sleeping or dead on the side of the road, up a 30% grade ramp to the parking lot of said grocery store. There, we get a cart which is not $12 but $28 (this we don't find out until it's been assembled for us). We pack it full of groceries and head back to the metro stop. Before we even get out of the store we realize our mistake. The wheels face rigidly forward, so the cart doesn't turn. The handle is too short by inches, so we both have to hunch over uncomfortably to control the thing. It's so low to the ground that you kick it as you walk. And perhaps worst, the front wheels are so small and narrow that they get stuck in any and all cracks, causing the rubber outer wheel to pop off as you ram the cart handle into your groin.

Miraculously, our case of beer made it home without a disaster. Our vegetables are somehow unbruised.

Essentially, there is little that could have been worse about the design of the thing. I'm nearly convinced that it was designed by the same folks who built the levees, or all those crumbling bridges and tunnels. So we are one option down, until we find a better buggy and a less terrifying grocery store.

I don't know how long it will take us to get accustomed to this place, this unfamiliar way of life. But I feel quite certain that a lot of trial-and-error will be involved. I feel like a bit of a weenie for admitting that having to hoof it everywhere for the simplest errand makes me tired just thinking about it, but we shall see. We shall see.