Home Shopping Network

When I was a little girl in Richmond B.C. we had the Chinese grocery man who came to our house with his little vegetable truck. My mother would go outside and pick out the vegetables she wanted – he would weigh them on the spot and she would pay him. His veggies were always wonderfully fresh and good. He was a very nice man with a strong accent and every Christmas time he would give us a present of candied ginger.

Yesterday we witnessed another variation on this theme. When Cindy and I arrived back home at #22, there was a creatively designed front half of a bike, with a cart attached, sitting in our driveway (check out the photo - would you call this a bart?). Plastic bags bulging with various kinds of vegetables and some melons filled the cart. The cook was there along with the vendor, who lifted a large old-style weighing scale down off his cart. She picked out the particular things she wanted, he weighed them and we helped her carry the plastic bags full of veggies into the house.

There is another variation on the bike theme that is very popular here. Cindy and I have wondered why we don’t have these nifty bikes in the States. They are electric, but you can also pedal them. You plug them in and charge up the battery – they are about the size of a moped, but much quieter. Why don’t we have them? Granted, they don’t have that wonderful, patented Harley Davidson growl, but they don’t pollute the atmosphere.