I used to live in Europe, and a bicycle was my primary mode of transport. That was when I was a single man with no children. However, I can't see how I could possibly use a bicycle for really any transport at all today. Advocates of cycling, I would be genuinely interested in how you would logistically achieve a typical weekend day in my life, which might consist of: - Transporting myself, my wife, my daughter, my do…
Partly it's because I live in a city with rubbish traffic on weekends, so a weekend like you describe would be full of crawling traffic and hunting for parking spots.
Having a weekend like you describe - which I remember more from other cities - is something that you can do because of the ways cities are designed (big box stores!). Not wanting to be a moral scold, but a lot of cycling advocates would just say "spend your weekends differently". That's not what I'm saying - and elsewhere I complain that a lot of cycling advocates seem to assume everywhere is already set up like Amsterdam in terms of population density and flatness. However, spending every weekend piling into a vehicle to schlep around big box stores is a choice, just like living in some dense area and cycling everywhere in a cutesy whole-family cargo bike.
You use the word 'need' a lot, even for stuff like "breakfast at a cafe" ('mom: we have breakfast food at home', as the meme goes). A lot of this stuff is choices.
