The next thing she did was buy a trolley-full of bagels from the supermarket to give to the schools where children went without breakfast.
After quickly realising our backs wouldn't support the 20kg of equipment we each have to carry, we bought a golf trolley to help us push it all from place to place.
On the train home Friday morning, Mark bought a turkey sandwich from the refreshment trolley, and then crisps and a Coke.
Having moved from shopping trolley to shop-front, Sabina has built a website advertising her flower-arranging and bought a refrigerator to keep the flowers fresh.
Five years ago, Patrick Nulle, a former real estate developer and once the youngest mayor of Barnegat, bought the Jolly Trolley, a local pub with a long railroad layout, low ceilings and "boots everywhere".
He spends a laborious 15 minutes at a corner information kiosk determining whether his readers might save a euro buying a full-day transit pass as opposed to individual trolley tickets.
I overhear a man buy a stranger a drink, and there is much nervous flirtation over the sale trolley.
Instead, buy a weeklong CityPass (888-330-5008; www.citypass.com; $49; $39 for children 5 to 17), which gives you unlimited use of Muni buses, trolleys, cable cars and historic streetcars.
If you decide to tackle the city center's main attractions, buy a ticket for the double-decker Cape Town Explorer (27-21-511-6000; www.hyltonrand.co.za; 100 rand; 50 rand for ages 2 to 12), a hop-on hop-off tourist trolley.
The strange part is that going shopping at 3am in order to buy a half-price television is understandable, but it is just as common to see people mooching about with a dozen eggs and a loaf of bread in their trolley, a mind-boggling way to spend time that could otherwise be spent in bed.
