Triking

It's pissing down Nr Hunstanton, Norfolk. Why are we here? To get away from it all, and get away from it you do on a trike. I wake these mornings often as not thinking about the Odyssey, as dawn's long fingers splice their way into strange rooms, and a new set of trials await. I want to feel heroic about it. I do that for comfort, because most of the time when you are on the road on a trike you get so disappointed for the rest of the world.
Even with it pissing with rain we had to get to a fishmonger this morning, and even this simple task involves a good deal of meticulous thought and care; I mean you don't want to mangle this piece of machinery up, and you don't want to drop things or loose things or leave anything unlocked. You want the beast to start and you want her to grunt (but that isn't guaranteed) whatever the conditions; you don't want anything falling off. Well so there is a good deal of girding of loins; we even had an argument about the towel I'd got from the bathroom to try and dry the important bits off.
When we got to this fishmonger, part of a small farmers market operation near Thornham just up the coast, I was standing there soaking whilst a lady breezed up in her white 4x4 (I find the white ones particularly offensive) dismounted, and cheerly asked, in one of those very posh, highly mannered voices belonging to the superior and older class, for two fishcakes (total cost less than £3.00). Then she equally breezed off in to the rain, the ever present rain. I doubt she was thinking about anything but her two fishcakes she had commissioned her ghastly vehicle to get. She was cosy, warm and dry, perhaps even soothed by Pachelbel. She didn't care where she parked the bloody thing and she might as well have been wearing her pyjamas, she didn't care about other road users (they never do, those 4x4 owners are the worst!) nor about the woeful extravagance she had just thoughtlessly demonstrated to the peculiar looking witness she had just breezed past. She was certainly not interested in her engine, she was just entitled, the world was at her disposal, and this part of North Norfolk is full of such types, as well of course, as those in their painful servitude.
On board a trike you are entitled to nothing except the occasional joyful waves of truckers. You get by via the selfless help of others who might know the local roads, and by a certain mental strength that sees grit in your expression and eyes ever on the look out. The experience of 'getting away from it all' is pretty extreme. But there is a point to that, especially if you are somebody like me who would normally by happy just reading a book or sitting in the pub.
Because of course, just as in the Odyssey, when your day is at it's end, and you are safely welcomed in some strange place, you get to feast. You have, of course, earn't your rewards, just as those ancient texts demonstrate; there is a morality to it, and that is genuine satisfaction.