My solution for moving without a car!

Right now, I'm over in Europe in a somewhat unique situation where I'm moving apartments every couple weeks.  Last week, I had to make my first move - all the way across the city of Biel with several suitcases and boxes.

Friends helped with my kitchen stuff and my bed, but since I ended up moving my clothes the next day, I was on my own for the suitcases.

So, here was my challenge:

I had to get two big suitcases and a couple smaller boxes from one apartment to the other.  I didn't have a car or a bus pass (and since my German is spotty, I don't even know how to find the right bus!)  I could have walked - but the apartments were at least 20 minutes apart by foot and it's exhausting to drag suitcases so far while carrying other bags. I know, because I've done it before.

So I had a brilliant idea.  I'd drag a suitcase with one arm and take my bike with the other.  Except when I tried it, that actually turned out to be a BAD idea... resulting in a major spill of my make-up bag on a major road and an old lady yelling in me in French.  Whoops!

So, I put my Masters in Creativity to  use and came up with this -->

Yup, that is me hauling my suitcase along like a trailer behind my Brompton (fold-up) bike.

And all it took was my bike, a rolling suitcase and the chain and lock I already had.

And my parents wondered if I'd ever use my degree..! ;-)

Just to prove that it actually works, a friend took a video of me biking happily along, enjoying the freedom of not having to haul my suitcase along like normal not-so-creative (or desperate) people:

 Just thought I'd share the fun in case any of you are ever in the same situation! :-)

Comments

[Jim Baxter]

Each individual human being possesses a unique, highly developed, and
sensitive perception of variety. Thus aware, man is endowed with a natural
capability for enacting internal mental and external physical selectivity.
Quantitative and qualitative choice-making thus lends itself as the superior
basis of an active intelligence.

Human is earth's Choicemaker. His title describes his definitive and
typifying characteristic. Recall that his other features are but vehicles of
experience intent on the development of perceptive awareness and the
following acts of decision and choice. Note that the products of man cannot
define him for they are the fruit of the discerning choicemaking process and
include the cognition of self, the utility of experience, the development of
value measuring systems and language, and the acculturation of
civilization.

The arts and the sciences of man, as with his habits, customs, and
traditions, are the creative harvest of his perceptive and selective powers.
Creativity, the creative process, is a choice-making process. His articles,
constructs, and commodities, however marvelous to behold, deserve neither
awe nor idolatry, for man, not his contrivance, is earth's own highest
expression of the creative process.

Human is earth's Choicemaker. The sublime and significant act of choosing
is, itself, the Archimedean fulcrum upon which man levers and redirects the
forces of cause and effect to an elected level of quality and diversity.
Further, it orients him toward a natural environmental opportunity, freedom,
and bestows earth's title, The Choicemaker, on his singular and plural brow.

Human is earth's Choicemaker. Psalm 25:12 He is by nature and nature's God a
creature of Choice - and of Criteria. Psalm 119:30,173 His unique and
definitive characteristic is, and of Right ought to be, the natural
foundation of his environments, institutions, and respectful relations to
his fellow-man. Thus, he is oriented to a Freedom whose roots are in the
Order of the universe. selah

That human institution which is structured on the principle, "...all men are
endowed by their Creator with...Liberty...," is a system with its roots in
the natural Order of the universe. The opponents of such a system are
necessarily engaged in a losing contest with nature and nature's God.
Biblical principles are still today the foundation under Western
Civilization and the American way of life. To the advent of a new season we
commend the present generation and the "multitudes in the valley of
decision."

The message is this: Trust Freedom. Remember, tyrants never learn. The
restriction of Freedom is the limitation of human choice, and choice is the
fulcrum-point of the creative process in human affairs. As earth's
choicemaker, it is our human identity on nature's beautiful blue planet and
the natural premise of man's free institutions, environments, and respectful
relations with one another. Made in the image of our Creator, free men
choose, create, and progress - or die.

Free men should not fear the moon-god-crowd oppressor nor choose any of his
ways. Recall with a confident Job and a victorious David, "Know ye not you
are in league with the stones of the field?"

Let us proclaim it. Behold!
2009 AD: The Season of Generation-Choicemaker Joel 3:14 KJV

semper fidelis
Jim Baxter
Sgt. USMC
WW II and Korean War
point-man/follower of The Lion of Judah

[Hear Mum Roar]

Very cheeky, very cute!