What do I get passionate about? Things that make me feel joyful, delighted, happy.

Sharing them with you sounds like a project worth doing, though I know myself well enough by now to avoid promising to do one every day for a week, much less a year. So I’ll stick to just posting when the mood strikes.

My very first Happy Thing: taking my cats for a walk on the beach. I’ve written about this before, but the joy I feel with these two, listening to the waves roll in, smelling the seaweed and salt, feeling the wind and warmth of the sun.

Perhaps more than almost anything else, these walks define my daily life and remind me to pay attention and be happy. I took along our new videocamera and, having heard somewhere that 3 seconds is the average shot these days, what you get is a slice of our life today, in 3 second doses.

May it bring a smile to your face too.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=aB2DS12QCx4

I felt restless, cranky, worried in that intangible way that happens when I have too many things in my head and doubts that I’ll ever manage to get them all done.

When I get like this, Malcolm and I sit down for a cup of tea and I tell him all the things troubling me. As we learned from our Strengthsfinder results, one of Malcolm’s biggest strength is strategic thinking — in his case, he’s particularly good at looking at all the details of a situation, all the compicating factors, and determining a path ahead.

I think it’s his training as a mountain guide and navigator, where, when setting out for a hike in the outdoors with a group, he takes into account a million factors ranging from impending clouds and wind direction to the fitness levels and health conditions of the people he’s leading. He has to decide the direction he’s going to take and reassure all the people that everything’s fine.

That kind of skill comes in real handy for someone like me who tends to want everything perfect and therefore is overwhelmed when there are too many factors for me to cope with.

So, what did he suggest?

First off, a To Do list.

It sounds so unappealing doesn’t it? So tedious, so draw-within-the-lines.

But the act of grabbing two scraps of paper and a big blue marker and just writing down every single thing nagging at me, from finishing my income tax to dropping off the recycling on the morning bus run tomorrow, left my head clearer, my spirits a little less oppressed.

So now our To Do list is hanging next to the calendar, ready for us to cross items off as we go.

But that wasn’t quite enough, so the second thing I did was do some housecleaning.

Wow, To Do lists and housecleaning.

I’m really inspiring you, aren’t I? But again, picking a small task like vacuuming the living room gives me a sense of control in a world full of chaos. It’s a manageable task I can cross of my list and I can feel like I’m achieving something. It also makes the space more relaxing and pleasant to be in.

Invariably, one task leads to another and I found myself stringing washing on the line in the sunshine, an activity that always makes me feel quaintly back in time as if I’m living on the frontier alongside my ancestors.

Oddly enjoyable, hanging the laundry out to dry

Something about pegging up the clothes as the wind snaps the edges and straightens out the wrinkles, the birds fly overhead and the sun sneaks past the hulk of the house, and I feel a sense of something much more fulfilling than just doing a chore.

Job done and satisfaction restored

Finally, after all that palaver is done, I can drop onto my bed, soak in the sunshine streaming in the windows, and relax with a cup of apple tea to the BBC coverage of the Winter Olympics.

Hm, To Do lists and a quick clean — the oddest, smallest things can make the nicest difference.

Since we’re such butter junkies — I’d guess we go through something like a pack a week — we thought finding this out would be be both fun and illuminating. In our case, is it worth dishing out the extra money for Lurpak and President over the cheaper ones? A blind taste test is the only way to find out.

Handily, it’s also a good excuse to eat lots of butter.

Butter taste test ready to go

Ode to butter

One of the great joys of Britain for me is their butter. Oh how I love it so. Having grown up on margarine (because we all thought it was healthy didn’t we?), I was a latecomer to the Way of Butter, but when I moved here I stumbled across all the different European butters right in the grocery store aisle. The love affair began, and to this day our guests at our table marvel at the thick slices of butter we cut as if it’s cheese.

I say, you’re missing out if you carefully cut only the stingiest bit of butter for your bread or porridge or crumpet or scone. And God help you if you’re still using margarine. Get thee to a creamery!

In any case, I highly recommend holding your own Butter Blowout. Here’s what you need to do:

Holding your own Butter Blowout

Stock up on your usual favourites and add the most high-end and cheapest butters.

The six brands

In our case, I usually beg to have Lurpak, which is Danish or President, which is French. We actually have a local butter, Walliwall, which I initially loved but had recently and didn’t like the flavour of. It’s unpasteurised, so perhaps I left it out too long. So we bought all those, plus Kerrygold (Irish), which I remember liking and Malcolm scoffed at, and Tesco’s generic. We threw in goat’s butter, which I’ve never had before, at the last minute for fun.

Malcolm did the preparing and lucky me, I did the tasting.

Yikes, too much salt

What amazed me straightaway was how salty most of the butters were. Three of them I pretty much dismissed because all I could taste was salt. My top 3 were noticeable in taste and my very favourite really stood out as by far the best.

My guesses

Malcolm had me try to guess which one was which brand. Here were my guesses of which brand alongside my rankings:

#6 (last place): Tesco Salted

#5: Kerrygold

#4: Lurpak

#3: Goats butter

#2: President

#1: Walliwall

Walliwall has a different texture — more like crumbly cheese — so it’s hard to disguise. It has a marvelous creamy, slightly sweet flavour with a richness I associate with Orkney Ice Cream. Yum. As I mentioned before, it’s unpasteurised and I think that might be partly why it tastes so delicious — you aren’t killing off the flavour through overheating.

But I got the butter brands wrong otherwise.

The actual butter rankings

Here’s what they actually were:

#6: Lurpak. Doh! All this time I thought it was my favourite, but it was just SO salty. Next time we’ll try unsalted.

#5 Tesco’s. Yep, it’s crap, as suspected.

#4 Kerrygold. OK, but still too salty.

#3 President. Yummy, but with a smell I didn’t like and not as good as…

#2 Goat’s butter. Delish.

#1 Walliwall. Superstar. Anyone with access to it simply must try it.

So that was fun. Walliwall is the hands-down winner and it’s local!

Next time…

We’re going to do it again but with less salty underpinnings, like water crackers instead of oatcakes. We’re also going to be a bit more aware of how much salt we’re eating since at the end of the session, I had a sore throat and 30 minutes on, I’m still feeling it. So we’re going to get the unsalted butters next time.

Let the buttery times roll…

I’d write on the blog about what I’m thinking about with Touchwood and life. I’d share this North Star stuff, the ever-changing plans and dreams, different projects I’m working on.

The above sentences are from my notebook as part of an exercise from the book Finding Your Own North Star: Claiming the life you were meant to live. There are a series of sentences along the lines of “If I were sure I’d succeed, I’d…” and “If I had the nerve, I’d…”.

So I dutifully wrote down my answers only to reach the end of the exercise where the author, Martha Beck, says:

Now I’d like you to choose one of your answers that is neither illegal nor physically dangerous and do it. Right now, before you’re sure that it’s fail-safe, or acceptable, or risk-free. When you’re finished with that item, pick another one, and do that one too. Yes, I know you’ll be breaking the Rules. I don’t care. The needs for certainty and permission are electric fences in your mind. Which would be worse: whizzing all over them or permanently forfeiting all of the things you wrote on the list above?

What? I have to actually do what I just wrote?

So here I am, writing, a part of me convinced that no one’s reading this anyway because it’s so self-indulgent. So New Agey.

But then I think “Hey, it’s the New Year, 2010, and it’s the time to do things that scare us.”

The thing is, I do think we’re doing a lot of exciting things with Touchwood and in our day-to-day lives (which is really one and the same), but I always feel I need to get it close to perfect, tidied up enough so that it will make sense and be appreciated by you, the reader.

I imagine you wouldn’t really be interested in our ideas and projects until I can figure out how to make them more accessible, more usable and relevant to you. I mean, ideas are one thing, but it’s the actual doing of it that’s the real value, right?

Because we’ve got enough people just talking about their lives, and I wouldn’t want to bore people by droning on about ours. So I’ve stuck with tutorials or helpful articles, things I think you might want to hear about.

Problem with that is, it requires so much work to do them you don’t often ever get to see them, and I’m starting to think perhaps I need to be less perfect and just do it. Maybe sharing some of our ideas without everything else might be interesting too.

Latest work-in-progress: Make your own boot liners

For example, I’m working on designing and sewing up my own wellie boot liners to keep my feet toasty and dry:

While I’m excited about sharing that with you, I feel like I need to do a whole bunch of things first before I can write about it here. Things like:

• testing them out in different conditions to see how the design holds up and whether it should be reworked
• drawing the pattern (currently fashioned out of plastic shopping bags) in Photoshop so it’s perfect and you’ll be able to print it out at home
• figuring out how to size it down or up so you can adjust it to your foot size
• finding all the links to the sites you’ll need to get supplies, both for the UK and the US
• taking photos of all the stages of construction
• writing clear, easy-to-follow instructions and testing them out

So uh, that’s a lot to do before I can write about it.

The problem is, aside from the amount of work involved, once I’ve done all that I’m kind of bored with the project and ready to move on to something else. So while we actually do quite a few projects, we don’t tell you about most of them because we’ve already moved on.

Which brings me back to this little North Star exercise.

Sharing the less than perfect stuff

I’m going to take a gamble and start writing about the projects in progress, rather that waiting until they’re good enough to feel I can tell you about them.  I hope it’s of value to you, either as something you can then do yourself or as entertainment.

And while I’m at it, I’d like to share not just the DIY projects, but some of our thoughts and more abstract ideas too in the hopes that they help or inspire you — at least in the “I thought I was the only one!” kind of way. We’re pretty ace at doing things the odd way, the kooky way, so if you feel like a dork or outcast, don’t. Because we know just what you mean and applaud you.

All the little but shrill voices of fear

It’s scary to do this because I just keep imagining all these people rolling their eyes, thinking how we’re such dreamers, that we’re not actually practical or achieving anything, all we do is talk about things and kind of half-assed do them. They whisper derision, masquerading as “But I’m just trying to be practical/helpful/realistic.”

Well, my answer is I am a dreamer and a thinker, but I’m also a doer. I’m less good at the doing maybe, and I’m definitely not the detail-oriented person who dots the is and crosses the ts, but I do get enough done and that’s just going to have to suffice.

Someday I hope to find those detailed, see-the-thing-through-right people because I know we need them in the long run to make Touchwood work. But in the meantime we’re just getting on with what we can do.

Let’s see, another little voice of fear I can hear in my head warns me that people reading this will think how they’d do it way better than that, that I’m so foolish, so ignorant for thinking my way could ever work.

OK, well if anyone out there reads about a project we’re doing and thinks they can do it better, I hope they’ll let us know. I like ideas for improvement.

The last little voice says that this all sounds suspiciously like self-help, all very American, and all I can say in reply is, “Then don’t read it.” You probably won’t have read this far in this post anyway, but for the benefit of my self-doubt, I’d say that personal development is basically the pursuit of happiness and what better goal than that? What could possibly be more important than understanding yourself, what a fulfilling life means to you, and what you have to offer the world? If you think thinking about stuff like that is a waste of time, then you won’t be interested in what we’re doing anyway.

So on to the positive. I’ll write for those of you out there who are interested in what makes for a happy, fulfilled life. Who find making things yourself, especially out of things you’ve already got or that are inexpensive or easy to get, a lot of fun.

I’ll write to those of you who see clearly the threats to a good life, to our environment through the endless buying of stuff and the pressure to always work harder, and believe that the best way to deal with that is to follow what makes you happy, cultivate adaptability and learn how to do things that matter.

Creating the tribe

Seth Godin says in his book Tribes that we should all be leaders, we should stop catering to the masses and focus instead on finding our tribe and leading from our own unique perspective. We should stop trying to fit in and should embrace standing out because, no matter how bizarre or far out you are, there are others out there like you. And they’re waiting to hear from others like them.

Like Star Trek fans who live in uniform 24/7, or people who spin yarn out of their pets’ hair.

Or maybe a couple who live on a remote island and like to go without electricity once a month, don’t have a car, live on £12,000 a year, and who spend hours every single day just talking to each other.

I’ll do my best then to share with you our ideas as well as our little projects that make life more interesting, fun or comfortable. I’ll talk about where we are with Touchwood, how it’s continually evolving, what we’re learning — because it’s a lot, and it’s exciting. To us, anyway and hopefully to you too.

I’ll be writing to our very own tribe because I believe we have much ahead of us to do and now is the time to start doing it.

,

Ha. I assure you, I’m far too lazy to make all these changes for some distant noble cause. Nope, I’m doing it first and foremost because I’m enjoying myself, a point which a little adventure reminded me of recently. I’ll call it “The Tale of the MacGyvered Christmas Gift.”

MacGyver to the rescue

Like the hero of the 80s show MacGyver, about a peace-loving secret agent who inevitably saves the day with his Swiss Army knife, a metal tube, and a piece of gum, I was in a sticky situation with only a few bits and pieces to rescue me.

My problem was Christmas.

The Christmas challenge

Since Malcolm is the youngest of five, we’ve got a lot of presents to make, what with nieces and grandparents and stepparents and three continents to worry about. We’ll be with my in-laws down in England for the holiday, and I’ll be honest: I’m feeling under pressure to come up with presents that won’t embarrass me or break the bank.

If it was my family, they’d like anything I came up with, under the motto of “It’s the thought that counts.” But with in-laws, as wonderful as they are, there’s still that anxiety over whether it will be good enough, whether they’ll actually like what you’ve done or just wished you’d given them a gift certificate instead.

Oh and did I mention we’ve got a budget of £20 for all the presents? Yes, £20 for about 20 presents. A year ago I would have said it was impossible. But I’ve learned a lot of tricks since then.

Putting the plan of action together

My first essential tool for the mission: a ball of yarn I’d gotten secondhand for free.

Treasure #1: free yarn

Thanks to learning how to knit two years ago, I knew I could make something with it and knock off at least one gift.

Next stop: Ravelry, a website for knitters, where I found a free pattern for a cowl scarf. But then I realised I only had one needle that was the right size. In the past I would have just bought a new pair like these, which would have set me back £15.

Beautiful but expensive knitting needls

But forking over £15 isn’t an option, so what to do?

Hm, could I make my own? A quick Google search and indeed, I can.

Going that frugal step further, instead of buying wooden dowels I scrounged around Malcolm’s woodpile that he uses to teach firemaking and stripped a stick with a knife. Then I sanded it smooth with an old bit of sandpaper lying in the garage. Perfect. Pretty as the bought ones and I can make multiple ones, saving myself £15 every time.

Onto the scarf. Encouraged by my success, I curled up in the kitchen next to the Aga stove, chatted with Malcolm, listened to the audiobook of Made to Stick and peacefully knitted. For an hour I just enjoyed the play of colour as it popped into view with each stitch and lost all track of time.

But then, whoops. I looked down at my tiny ball of yarn, annoyed because I didn’t have enough left to finish the project. I’d end up with half a scarf at this rate.

Now if money were no object, I’d just hop online and buy some more. £5 a ball and away I’d go. Instead, here was another opportunity to MacGyver a fix. Mulling it over with a cup of peppermint tea, I remembered some cream coloured yarn about the right size that’s hiding in the attic.

Raspberry swirl

Put em together and lo, there were stripes.

After another couple hours of happy knitting, I ended up with a snuggly, tasty raspberry and cream scarf, ready to be wrapped for Christmas. First part of the mission accomplished.

The scarf and handmade knitting needles

Knitting may not be your thing, but it’s the challenge that makes life fun. It’s finding a solution to each problem I encountered that excited me more than a trip to the mall or a spree on eBay could ever do.

It’s not all sunshine and roses

Lest all this happiness start to annoy you however, I assure you I do get cranky. Learning new stuff means you’re a bit of a loser at first. You’re a novice, and that means you often look like a dork.

It’s like this new bicycled experiment we’re on. I don’t ride much, I’m not in shape. When we were cycling into Stromness the other day for the first time ever, you should have heard me swearing as I huffed and puffed the 5 miles into town.

Legs on fire, lungs heaving after 2 miles. Then we hit a headwind and I kid you not, I had to switch to my very lowest gear of my 21 speed bike and we were on flat ground. I wasn’t peddling uphill, I was simply trying to move forward on a flat road, and you could have walked faster than I was going.

That's about what it felt like

Cars zipped by and I pictured the drivers looking on, amused at or worse — pitying my slow, slow wobble forward. I imagined lean lycra-clad cyclists whizzing past to leave me in the dust, contempuous of my snail’s pace.

Still I kept on cycling, pushing one foot then the other, finally resorting to counting each revolution to keep me going. Twenty-four, twenty-five...Get to 100 and start again.

I saw Malcolm up ahead, valiantly cycling as slowly as he possibly could, clearly having little trouble but doing his best to hide it. Humiliating.

But then we crested the hill into town and I saw I was home free. A nice long road downhill, coasting into town. I had done it. And I felt really, really proud of myself. Like I had run a marathon or birthed a child.

I figured the next morning I’d be dying, but I was surprisingly okay. Even weirder, I wanted to do it again.

It’s never the right time

That’s been my experience of doing new things so far. At first you think you could never do it, or that it’s just not the right time. You’ll do it when the kids have left the house, when you get the next raise, when you can afford to, when you know exactly what to do.

You couldn’t possibly make your own Christmas presents! You don’t have the time, you’re not artistic, no one will like what you make anyway.

Channeling your inner McGuyver

But then you start. You’re awkward, like I was riding the bike. You run out of resources, like I did knitting. But then you adapt and you keep going. You get wiley, you devise a cunning plan.

You start doing it and you focus sharpens. Time disappears. You forget to snack or complain or feel bored because you’re too busy doing your thing.

Then the best part: you succeed! You make the top of the hill or finish the scarf and you’ve done it. You’ve won, using your wits and your determination. You’ve done what they said couldn’t be done and won.

That’s the kind of happiness I’m talking about. It’s saying you want to do something, thinking it seems impossible, and then doing it anyway.

It’s enjoying setting challenges for yourself and succeeding at it. Saving the planet is just one more challenge that each of us can take on and have a great time overcoming with creativity and an easy laugh.

When we’re our own personal McGuyvers, we get to save the day on a regular basis — and have more fun than any 80s action star ever did.

What Would Your Own MacGyver Do?

What are your MacGvyered projects?

What challenge have you faced lately that required some MacGyver ingenuity? Have you made something out of stuff you had lying around that solves a problem? I’d love to hear your stories, so please share them here.

Update: Inspired by Darcy’s and Kerrilee’s hula hoop and fly swatter MacGyvered projects, I’ve added a new feature below that will let you upload pictures of your projects so we all can get some good ideas on how to tackle everyday challenges.

Just click on the Add Photo button and upload a picture of your project!

Add Photo

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Another Christmas present: Bag from old sweater   the Flyswatter 3000: a wooden spoon, paper bag, and twisty tie.

Bring on the circus bikes!

Going car-free in a rural location

Unlike when I lived in Washington DC you didn’t really need a car, not having one on Orkney is highly unusual. Pretty much everyone drives.

There are practical reasons for this: we have sporadic public transport, much of our housing is spread far and wide, and our weather can put even the hardiest person to the test.

But this isn’t the whole story.

Car = freedom

Having a car is also an emotional thing, a sign of independence. It’s even a little bit wrapped up in who we think we are.

For me, our car represents our dream of moving to Orkney and starting our own business. We bought our trusty Fiat Doblo 4 years ago in Perth when we decided to relocate to this island and start a new life.

Malcolm and our new car, moving to Orkney in 2004

Malcolm’s used it since then to run his tours with Five Senses, connecting visitors to Orkney in a new way. We’ve met so many good people through this and we’ve relied on the money it’s provided.

Car = home

I think it’s also been a security blanket, this idea that even if we didn’t have a house, we could always throw our stuff in the car and have a place to call home.

So giving up the car is saying goodbye to a lot of things, a lifestyle and identity that we’ve had for four years. It’s changing Five Senses as a business, dropping the car tours and either doing more of the bushcraft and outdoor skills, or well, who knows?

Finally, ditching the car is also a practical challenge, because what we’ve decided to replace our car with, at least for now, are bicycles.

Bicycles, really?

I’m not a big fan of bicycling culture. That whole spandex, toe clips and space age helmets thing puts me off.

Then there’s the wind. In the summer, we average around 15mph wind most of the time. In the winter, it can easily go up to 40-50mph, with a nice lashing of rain.

Since we’re briskly heading into winter, I can look forward to a 9am sunrise and 3:30pm sunset in January.

Huffing and puffing

Lastly, I’m totally out of shape. It’s a good day when I take a gentle walk on the beach for 15 minutes, so cycling for a few hours into Kirkwall…hm.

I need to exercise more, but I know myself. If I have the lazy alternative, I’ll take it. So while it’s nice to think I’d go on more walks and bike rides with proper motivation, the reality is I’m not doing that if I can drive instead.

I’m just going to have to give it a go and hope for the best.

Why this? Why now?

After all this moaning about how hard it’s going to be, you may be wondering why we’re bothering. Two big reasons: Age of Stupid and Office Space.

Age of Stupid basically asks us the question from 50 years in the future when the planet is ruined: Why didn’t we do enough about climate change?

The Age of Stupid USA Trailer from Age of Stupid on Vimeo.

Malcolm and I watched the film a few weeks ago and even though we’d seen films like An Inconvenient Truth, it was this one that tipped the balance and we both said “Enough already! Let’s do this.”

So we’re going on an experiment to reduce our carbon footprint to one tonne between the both of us, from 22 tonnes the average British couple consumes now.

We’ll be writing much more on this subject as part of our work with 10:10 — a movement that asks us to commit to reducing our carbon footprint by 10% in 2010. I hope to see you there.

Humans weren’t meant to be in cubicles

The other reason is best summed up by Office Space, which I often quote, where our hero works a meaningless, soul-destroying job in an office writing code for a big, meaningless corporation. Here’s one of my favourite scenes where Peter, the hero, explains to his work colleague what he’s realised about their crappy jobs:
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I remember those days all too clearly, and I never, never want to have to go back to that again.

With our still doing Touchwood Project as volunteers, we have to either reduce our spending or make more money. Until we can get sufficient funding, the only viable income options for us here are jobs like working for the Council or one of the grocery stores.

Selling the car is far preferable to either of those options for me, and it will give us living expenses for another few months, by which time we’ll hopefully have gotten our funding.

Other car-free options

Hitchhiking and car sharing are two alternatives we’d like to develop further. We’ve written a bit about this already, and will be doing much more in the coming months.

A third option I’m pretty excited about are electric scooters.

Xero's eScooter Classic

Ooo, prrrretty.

There are several models newly on the market, but I’m all about fun design, so I prefer a retro-styled model. Xero’s eScooter Classic gets from 50 miles in a single charge, goes up to 30 mph, and is reasonably priced at £1500 ($2500).

This option is well worth a fuller post on its own, so I’ll write that one soon. However, since one of the main reasons we’re selling the car is to save money, forking over £1700 or so for the scooter and gear isn’t what we want to do just yet.

As I wrote in an earlier post, I love the idea of quadricycles but at a whopping €3450/£3000, they’re even more expensive than a scooter, so it’s just going to have to wait.

It’s gotta be stylish and fun

Nope, if I’m going to do bicycling, it’s going to be fun and it’s going to be stylish. Happily, there’s a whole movement here, best seen in the Tweed Runs, cycling events where everyone dresses in my favourite fabric, tweed!

There’s just so much to talk about but I think I’ve run on long enough for now.

Malcolm’s just left the house to hitchhike and walk the 5 miles into Stromness to do our shopping. It’s cold, raining, but he left in high spirits — just about bounced out the door — because he sees it as an adventure, a chance to meet people and do a little, humble planet-saving. Me too.

Meet the quadricycle

Our quest to have fun, be playful and enjoy living green has started to move in another direction lately: getting rid of the car. Given that it’s 11 miles from our house to Kirkwall and the nearest bus stop is 2 miles away, walking or conventional cycling leaves me feeling apprehensive (the wind! the cold! I’m so not that fit!).

So if I’m going to give up something as freedom-giving and effort-saving as a car, it had better be for something good. Now one possibility we wrote about the other day is hitchhiking. I think this has enormous potential for our island in particular, but what if you don’t want to hitch?

Enter the wildly impractical quadricycle — a bike for 2 on 4 wheels.

I’ll tell you why I’m drawn to this kooky idea: I can’t stop laughing about it. The image of the two of us pedaling our way round the island, with some ridiculous flag on the back or triangle sign like the Amish put on their horse and buggy carriages, makes me smile.

I like to imagine the idea catching on, a whole island full of families do their weekly shopping in the four-passenger:

Quadricycle for 4 people, 2 children

Or couples out for a romantic drive to the Standing Stones, or friends carpooling to see a film in town. Imagine pulling up to your friend’s house to pick her up in one of these. Hilarious.

Perhaps you’d prefer the striped version?

Surrey with the fringe on top

Enter the practical challenges

Alas, there are a few problems with the concept. For one, there are no UK-distributors or manufacturers of quadracycles that I can find. Malcolm and I spent hours last night Googling to no avail. The models above are American, as are the other versions we found like Mobilette and Rhoades Car.

Mobilette's "Tornado", which also appeals

Hm, not very comfortable

More worryingly, these models are all meant to be used at leisure resorts, going maybe a few miles at a slow pace. My favourite design, Quadricycle International’s one at the beginning that looks like the a VW Beetle, has a speed limit of five miles an hour. I might as well walk.

And none of them are adjustable seating, so Malcolm’s 6′ 2″ and my 5′ 8″ would be using the same frame. That’s not going to work if we’re going to cycle 22 miles in one day.

OK, comfortable but so…boring

So if we want a quad that’s going to be remotely practical, we’d have to spring for this:

ZEM's quadricycle seems a bit industrial

Zero Emission Machine is the only European quadricycle manufacturer we could find. They’re Swiss, and their quads are comfortable, adjustable, reasonably fast — and horribly pricey at €3450 (£3000 or $5150). They also look too much like bicycles to me.

The red is kinda cool, but where’s the canopy? Where’s the playfulness?

The other practical alternative is Montana-based Lightfoot Cycles, whose helpful comparison of their quad with all the other major manufacturers first brought the practical problems to my attention:

Lightfoot's Microcar

Again, it just looks like 2 mountain bikes strung together. Where’s the laugh factor?

So, I’m not sure where this leads. Malcolm thinks perhaps we could get someone over here in the UK to make one or modify it. The Lightfoot has the added advantage of being able to carry an electric motor, something that appeals as it’d help me get up our admittedly pretty tiny hills.

A new way to tour Orkney?

The other application I love for the idea of quadricycles is touring Orkney. Malcolm’s been taking people around Orkney in our 7-seater Doblo, and most people drive cars to see Skara Brae and the other big tourist sites.

While there’s some bus services, they don’t go everywhere and so many people prefer the control you have with your own vehicle. Wouldn’t it be great to see some of the more adventurous ones tooling around in a quad instead? They could stop and visit with each other when they pass on the road.

Surrey Company's "Limousine" just right for families

An island full of quadricycles would certainly be a talking point and perhaps even a tourist attraction in its own right. Add electric-powered batteries assisted by wind or wave power, and you’ve got something truly exciting.

Hitchhiking is something I associate with grubby guys, desperate backpackers, and the occasional kidnapping or worse. I have some notion that it’s even illegal in some countries.

So suffice it to say that when Malcolm approached me with the idea of hitchhiking I was skeptical — I believe my response was “No way in hell.”

Malcolm's thumb, ready for a lift

However, I’m rethinking my staunch opposition and am coming around to believing that in fact, done right, hitchhiking could be a wonderfully effective way to meet local people, improve ties in a community, save money and help the planet too.

Not a bad haul for sticking your thumb out.

Our effervescent lorry driver who gave us a lift

No longer a hitchhiking virgin

So I finally tried hitchhiking with Malcolm when we were in Ireland a few weeks ago and it was great. I had fun!

A lorry (rig/18-wheeler) driver picked us up, rucksacks and all, and spent the next 15 minutes to the town we were heading to regaling us with tales. Here’s our benefactor on the right.

Let me tell you, I felt more connected to Ireland in that moment, more of an experiencer (I’ll just make up that word) of the place than an observer or tourist, than I did at any other time. I was meeting and talking with someone who lives and works there, who sees the country all the time and has plenty of observations to share.

Malcolm calls his approach to hitchhiking 5 star hitchhiking because it’s about choosing it for the benefits it brings you and others. I’ll let him enumerate on those in later posts, but for now, let me share the true story Malcolm wrote about one experience he had hitching and you can judge for yourself.

Edinburgh to London fast and free

Years ago I was in Edinburgh with a girlfriend. She was leaving the city on a coach for London and I was devastated when I couldn’t book a seat on the coach too. I waved her off with a tear in my eye. With no desire to do anything on my own I was lost and restless. Nor did I have money to overcome the loneliness. I felt crap.

I opted to get “out of there” and decided to hitch “anywhere”. So I walked to the local bus stop and got on a bus going west, out of town, towards the ring road, past Corstorphine and the Zoo. Then I sulkily put out my thumb and trusted to whatever showed up.

I got a lift, towards Glasgow. Then another lift onto the A74 southbound, still unsure of what I was doing or where I was going. I dunno, maybe home to North Wales or maybe the mountains of the Lake District?

Well, my next lift took me into England quickly and it started to dawn on me that this was the same route my girlfriend’s coach would be taking, down the M6, to London. I started to look out for a National Express coach. My driver was in a hurry, doing well over 100 mph, at times I worried we would not survive.

Anyhow, to keep the story short, I got it into my head to chase the coach, and I started to calculate relative speeds, and the head start the coach had on me. It seemed worth trying and my lifts were taking me that way. But no sign of any express coach.

It was going great until I reached the Luton area, north of London on the M1. I was dropped off at a service station, just as light was fading. After the toilets I got a quick coffee and a pen, then wrote a sign saying LONDON, then I walked out past the petrol station to the exit road onto the motorway.

My heart sank. There was a long line of hitchers, at least a dozen, scattered out along the grass verge. And not your smart looking hitchers either. It looked like the photo line up for the police station, and they were all ahead of me. So close but it seemed my hopes were dashed, the chase was lost. I stood and watched. Hardly any cars were passing, maybe one a minute max. None were stopping. Everyone looked miserable and territorial. I was just one more nuisance. I kept out of the way.

A truck stopped, one guy jumped up and went. The queue shuffled a bit. 10 minutes and nothing. It was starting to drizzle and was getting dark, making us all look like shifty shadows. Criminals one and all. A car stopped mid way along the queue and took a very thankful hitcher away. No one moved. So I filled the gap and sat down, depressed.

I paid no attention to the cars as I had to wait for all these others to go first, so I just inked in my sign a bit better, preparing for the dark of night. It was going to be a long night and I had nowhere to go. I had nothing better to do, so I just kept writing LONDON over and over, darker and darker, straightening the lines of the letters, doodling. Then I wrote “please” beneath it, reflecting my sense of desperation.

The sign that made all the difference

I was cold, nothing was happening. Some hitchers drifted off, and the 10 or so of us remaining strung out as if to get as far from each other as possible. I noticed all were trying to get lifts, the queue didn’t exist, it was a fashion contest or a parade of rough and grimy folks. One guy was on crutches, poor bloke. Another scared me, so I looked away. We all hitched, like fish trying to get hooked.

A car drove past me – a nice car, a Jaguar – and stopped further down the line. A guy jumped to the door and spoke to the driver then looked up and shouted at me. I didn’t understand. He shouted again, loud! He beckoned me with his arm. I picked up my bag (I was not letting that out of my sight) and walked up. “He wants you” said the hitcher.

I was in the Jaguar, purring down the motorway, next stop London. 12 cylinders hummed. The seats squeaked and smelt of real leather. The clock ticked silently. It was dark outside and the road was empty, as we accelerated well beyond legal limits again. We felt above the law, wrapped in such wealth. The driver, dressed in a smart suit, didn’t say much, other than this:

“I have never given a lift to anyone before – and I never expect to do so again – but you had the courtesy to say ‘please’, so I wanted to help you”.

Well, I told him why I was heading into London, chasing my girlfriend, the journey from Edinburgh, the coach fully booked. He drove me to Paddington station, gave me the money for the Tube (underground) and cruised off. I caught a train to Victoria coach station, arriving 20 minutes after the coaches arrival time. Can you believe it? After all that. All alone at a coach station again.

I was walking out of the station when in came a coach, the delayed Edinburgh coach! I hid behind a pillar, almost too weak to stand. The passengers all got off – and there she was!

I had beaten her to London, faster than the Express (non-stop) coach. You should have seen her face! We hugged.

This story is true. I print it here to be inspirational and informative.