Will Dive for Food. An Essay from hIrSch

This is the third and final of three essays from hIrSch who Backcountry.com has been helping out in his ongoing bike ride around the world. In this essay hIrSch explores the topic of obtaining food while on the road.

money is precious and is spent only when needed and my major expense is: FOOD! and trust me here, when you cycle for eight hours a day hauling all your junk with you, your appetite is cyclopean!

and so, when i took that boat from morocco to europe, i got the shakes. off to euroland. and the dollar is weak. and i gotta eat. how's this going to work...? and when i timidly entered my first grocery store (i NEVER eat out), my shakes got even shakier. hell's bells i'm in DEEP, i thought.

as my dad always told me, necessity is the mother of invention.

here is a little exercise for you. the next time you are grocery shopping, pretend you are on a bike. pretend you are hungry. very hungry! you are always hungry! and pretend that you have no job and that every one of your dollars is very, very, very precious to you. and now pretend that you do everything in your power not to waste what little you have. so what would you do?

well, before you trigger the automatic door opener to be blasted with hot air when it's cold or cold air when it's hot and horrible music that you can just barely hear, yes yes, before you do that:

you go to the dumpsters!!

now wait wait, don't tune me out yet! i know the word dumpster conjures up images of dirty diapers and unidentifiable sludges and slimes. but this is not the case. many dumpsters are quite clean. and even if it is a little dumpstery, wouldn't you still be willing to snag that completely and perfectly sealed bag of cereal that was tossed because the box surrounding it got a little smashed?

yes folks, dumpsters are goldmines for free food. not always, but for the far majority of the time you can always find something. and what i find is what i eat. and as long as it's not meat, i eat!! so if that means my dinner is carrots and cinammon rolls, well, ok then.

and so there you have it. two methods of my madness. dirtbagging and dumpster diving.

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