The Odyssey – Let the Trials Begin

 I was recently reading The Odyssey by Homer with my book club. (Hello to all my friends at The Readwell Podcast Book Club ).  It had been planned in our reading schedule over a year ago, and it was a happy coincidence that the movie would be coming out right about the time we finished reading the book.

There is a section near the beginning (in Book 5 of 24) where Odysseus is given the option of remaining with the nymph Calypso on her secluded island, living a life of ease and with the promise of immortality and eternal youth, or leaving the island to make the journey home to his family and native land.  He is warned that if he chooses to return home, he will face significant obstacles and dangers.  Having already lived through many hardships, Odysseus is not intimidated by the challenges ahead.  He responds by saying, “… let the trials begin.”  

(There is significant variation in the wording depending on the translation of Homer’s Odyssey that you are reading.  I have seen spirited interpretations like “let this adventure follow”, and rather mundane ones like “so let this go with the rest”.  I prefer “let the trials begin”.)

It is in much that same spirit that I am embarking on my cycling trip across the country.  I have no illusions that it will be easy.  To the contrary, I know it will be hard.  There will be the expected challenges (steep hills, strong winds, foul weather) and the random unexpected ones like mechanical breakdowns.  You know they are going to happen, but you don't know what will break, or when, or where.

Heck, the trials started before I even left home.  Trying to gather together all the equipment and supplies needed for the trip, trying to figure out how to pack it, struggling with mating the trailer to the trike (something that should have been dead simple but it wasn’t because one had metric fittings and the other had SAE).  

Packing things up in a way that met the size and weight requirements for the airline involved rather significant dismantling of the trike and trailer, and the consequent reassembly in Victoria.  I diligently packed, repacked, and repacked again until I had everything safely stowed in three boxes and a hockey bag.  Everything seemed to be within spec, but it is rather hard to weigh a large box on a bathroom scale.  I got to the airport and found that I was 2.9 lbs overweight on one box.  I had to open two of the boxes and redistribute at least 3, but not more than 5, pounds from one box to the other.  With a little work, I managed to get both boxes one pound under the 70 lb limit.  (The total weight of my four checked items and my carry-on items was 257 lbs.  Yikes!  My equipment outweighs me by a pretty hefty margin.)

So, then I diligently taped the boxes back up to make them secure and headed over to the oversize baggage drop-off.  The security guy took one look at me and said, “Those boxes are too big for the scanner.  You need to open them up and unpack the contents onto these tables for inspection.”  Good grief!  There was no arguing.  Everything got unpacked and repacked again.  I have never used so much packing tape in one day before.

I was hoping that was the end of my frustrations with the flying part of the trip, but it was not to be.  I got automated emails when each of my four checked items passed security and went through baggage processing, four more updates when the items were loaded on the plane, but only three messages when they were unloaded in Victoria, BC.  Somehow, one of the checked items went missing between Toronto and Victoria.  I don’t know if it never got loaded on the plane or if they failed to unload it, but it was missing for about 12 hours before the airline found it and sent it on an indirect journey to reach me.

And which checked item went missing?  The trike, of course.  If it had been any other box, I could have spent the next day assembling the trike while waiting for the missing gear to arrive.  But without the trike itself, there was nothing to do but wait.

(Uh-oh!  I'm too wide for the hotel room door.)

So, the airline trials are behind me and the road trials are ahead of me.  To be perfectly honest, I’m not really in the kind of shape I should be in to pedal a fully loaded trike and trailer through the mountains.  My cardiovascular fitness is fine, but my leg strength is not where it ought to be for this kind of challenge.  But getting into that kind of shape would have taken weeks or months of training and Canadian summers offer only a brief window of opportunity for this kind of trip.  Also, as a long-haul truck driver I don’t have a lot of free time for exercise.

So, I will be training by just doing it.  The initial stages will be the most physically challenging, and not just because I need to build up my leg strength.  Cross-Canada cycling trips are almost always done from west to east to take advantage of the prevailing winds from the west.  That means starting in British Columbia and that means mountains.  Those steep mountain grades will likely be the “make it or break it” obstacles.

I won’t be logging a lot of kilometres per day until I can build up some more strength and get over those mountains.  Once I cross over the Rockies, my daily mileage should improve substantially.

Let the trials begin!

(Here's proof that three-wheeled vehicles are inherently prone to tipping over, especially when loaded in a way that makes them top heavy.  Luckily that one was a load speed incident in the grass.  No injuries and no damage.  It wasn't my first tip-over and it likely won't be my last.)