Homemade Butter (A Little-Known Peril of the Bicycle Basket)

Yesterday I was running errands on my bike and picked up a half-pint of whipping cream at a grocery store in Manhattan before heading to Bay Ridge to teach a class.
On my bike, I used to always carry everything on my back in a giant waterproof Ortlieb bag, but I started to realize that the weight of the bag was causing a lot of stiffness in my shoulders to say nothing of the fact that my entire back would be drenched with sweat by the time I got into Manhattan.
Photo: Bicycle-Basket Butter
I always considered bike baskets kind of wussy. In my mind they went along with girls in stilettos carrying bouquets of fresh flowers on their mint-condition classic Dutch bikes. And I didn't want to be one of those girls. (When I worked downtown in a marble-lobbied cubicle-tower, I relished the times in the elevator when, lugging my Ortlieb bag and bundled up for the cold, I was mistaken for a professional bike messenger.)
But with my new bike, a 1963 Royal Scot, I struggled to pull off the bike messenger aesthetic. In comparison to my (stolen) cycle-cross bike, I felt like I was pedaling a pile of bricks across the bridges into Manhattan. (It's taken me a few weeks to accept that instead of barreling past guys in spandex with gazillion dollar carbon fiber frames, I'm just going to get passed. I try to console myself with the fact that I'm getting a really tremendous workout by pushing so many pounds of steel around NYC every day.)
One thing I did appreciate about my vintage English cruiser was how wonderful my posture felt to be siting upright rather than hunched over the handlebars. Coming to terms with the reality that I couldn't make myself look hardcore on this bike even if I tried, I decided to embrace the "Dutch bike" aesthetic and install a bike basket.
And I have to admit, I didn't miss my sweaty, heavy Ortlieb bag one bit. Until yesterday, when I discovered that New York City's potholes and cobblestones had turned my half-pint of whipping cream into Little-House-on-the-Prairie style butter, I couldn't find anything not to like about using the basket. But considering I'm not buying whipping cream on a daily basis, I can safely say this is drawback that I'm willing to overlook. (That is until I can find a basket with shock-absorbers.)

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