Rite of Passage

Well...if you happened to be driving down the road today in Chiang Mai, and you happened to pass us on our motorbike you may very well have thought we've lived here 10 years.  Or you may even assume that we were, in fact, Thai.

See, we had to go to the grocery store today.  That in itself is quite a feat on a motorbike - but nothing out of our ordinary.  To make matters more exciting today is that we hadn't been to the grocery in a couple of weeks.  We piled our motorbike more full than we've ever had it - and we felt very "Thai."  Now we weren't carrying a refrigerator or a big-screen TV (which we have witnessed), but all of our groceries made us fit right in.

We have carried large things before; Ryan even experienced this with us.  Here are Bret and his brother on their way to the airport.  We couldn't send Ryan off in any other way -- fully Thai style!  Yep, that's a suitcase in Ryan's lap and a duffle bag on his back.  Why isn't he smiling!?  Anyone else up for a visit?

I wish we had a picture of our grocery run to post, but that would have sent us over the edge - to have a camera on our bike, too!? No way.  But I will share with you a list of what we overflowed our nice blue Honda Dream with.

1 case of water (that alone filled our front basket...and we only have 1 basket.)
2 quarts of milk (those were in between me and Bret - don't ask where the rest of it fit)
1 bag of BBQ chips
1 bag of regular chips
1 bag of museli
2 boxes of cereal
broccoli
carrots
cauliflower
2 mangoes
1 papaya
16 cups of yogurt
instant coffee packets
coffee-flavored milk (it's really good)
loaf of bread (that didn't look like a loaf once we made it home)
1 bag of apples
and of course...peanut butter

I didn't mention that our grocery store doesn't give bags...

Quite the adventure, and we are soooo thankful for our motorbike!