I found a beautiful and awesome sculpture garden called the Monarch Sculpture Park
This was at the sculpture garden. These are prayer ribbons.
Dear Blog,
88% of a biker’s power is used up battling air resistance. I know. I didn’t believe it at first either. But countless real-life examples have convinced me once and for all. I will be going down a hill, at a nice 11 mph and then a wind slows me down to 5 mph and I have to engage the motor to ease the stress on my knees. Then I look to the trees to see how hard this wind is blowing only to find the low branches on the fir trees next to me being tickled only slightly. This can be extremely demoralizing.
Furthermore, with the motor’s chain put on, each pedal has to turn the gear and turbine in the engine. This yields each turn of the wheel very inefficient, to the point where I will slow to a halt on a downhill if I stop pedaling. Therefore, I have sometimes resorted to removing the chain when I have a stretch of more-or-less level ground. Removing the chain takes a good 5 minutes and putting it back on takes about 10. You can only see so far up the road and it’s difficult to tell how the terrain will pan out. So it is always a gamble taking the chain off or putting it back on.
In a lot of ways the motor feels like a temporary solution, but I don’t see how my knees could handle traveling without it. I wonder how much weight I could shed by abandoning the whole system and if the difference would let me pedal without pain. Hmmm. Big questions.
I’m enjoying the book I’m reading: Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods. It is about Bill adventure hiking the Appalachian Trail with his travel companion, Katz. I like the book not only because he’s a great, hilarious writer, but because he has a great way of putting the complex combination of profoundly monotonous long-distance travel and the beauty of just traveling; timeless, destinationless, traveling. He also fully understands the dynamic of journeys where the fact that you don’t have to do this never leaves your consciousness, and yet the mystifying sense of mission spurs you ever onward.
I guess I would say he is my traveling companion right now.
One of the richest descriptions he has offered is the strangeness of small-town America, a topic which has occupied my thoughts quite a bit lately. He describes Franklin, NC, (although it could have been any small town) as “small, dull, and cautiously unattractive, but mostly dull—the sort of place where you find yourself, for want of anything better to do, strolling out to the lumberyard to watch guys on forklifts shunting wood about.” My experience in several small towns the other day were similar, except flavored more with the feeling that I was patently unwelcome. After leaving Kati Thompson’s place in Olympia, I encountered a series of small towns. Kati’s, by the way was totally awesome. Kati sat next to me on the airplane ride to Seattle and gave me her card. I found it just in time to contact her in Olympia, and she invited me to stay the night. She has two cute kitties and a nice room to stay in. She and her husband have stopped drinking because they want to conceive a child. Men should stop drinking three months before conception and women one month. So they gave me browsing privileges to their beer collection. I had a delicious home-cooked dinner and breakfast, and got to watch a movie. It rocked.
Anyway…Walking into a tavern at 2:00 in Tenino, I was greeted by three large backs, midriff spilling out the bottom of each shirt, and a pitcher to the right of each one. Asking the woman behind the bar if there was a menu, she nipped back that menus are all over the place. So I found a piece of paper on the wall above one of the tables and studied it carefully, trying to find a burger. None appearing, I asked one of the backs where a guy could get a burger.
—What? Spoke one of the backs.
–A burger? Do you know where I could find one around here?
–This is it.
Scanning the menu once more and seeing no burger, I could feel the heat of helplessness spreading through the back of my neck. Should I get a coke then? Some wings? A beer?
Glancing at the backs again I realized that I would not be missed, nor when I feel any regret if I just left. So without a word, I walked back out into the daylight. I got the feel that each man in there felt silent, muted sense of victory.
So the next town I came to, Bucoda had a tavern that I was told by a woman had a good burger. Walking in, I got the same un-warm and un-fuzzy unwelcome feeling. I decided to stick it out and ordered a bowl of chili. And here I might add that my ordering skills have been wretched lately. I’ve been making choices like ordering a fish sandwich at a Thai restaurant, or an Americano from McDonalds when there is a cute espresso stand literally next door. So anyway, I order chili, and the woman tiresomely pulls a can of chili off a shelf, plops it into a bowl and sticks it into a microwave. All things considered, I realized that this was probably the only business decision that really made sense. So I restrained the urge to ask: Oooh, is this homemade?
When I told the woman that I was going to try to find a place to sleep in Chehalis, she gave me an unhopeful look and advised against it. Chehalis is kind of a dead town, she said. Again, I had to exercise self-control to not ask how Chehalis compared to this one. She suggested Centralia, a town about 4 miles above Chehalis. So when I reached Centralia and saw all the freedom is not free graffiti and the bumper sticker that said: For a small town, this one sure has a lot of assholes, I feared what Chehalis would have in store for me. But it was still rather early in the afternoon and I guess I wanted to prove the lady in Bucoda wrong, so I continued forth to Chehalis.
As far as I could tell, Chehalis wasn’t much different. Eventually I found a fire station on the south side of town and asked the fireman if I could set up my tent in their backyard. I could, as long as I didn’t go inside. Fair enough.
speaking of small towns...
The next day (yesterday) turned out to be what one might call a bad day. Well for most of it, at least. It started off with a slow and sore body. Soon I realized my fuel filter was clogged with gas tank gunk. After fixing that, I took a wrong turn, going a couple of miles out of my way. After finally getting back on track, I found out in Napavine that my muffler was broken. The baffle lost its welding, to be more specific. But to my great fortune, there was a muffler shop right in town. So I dropped off my muffler and went to a little café where I ate a very sad and kind older woman’s uneaten hash browns. In just this year she has lost her husband and her seven-year old granddaughter to cancer. It is always hard to know what to say in these situations.
So as I was putting my muffler back on I noticed that my jerry-rigged gas tank was leaking out of the valve. Now there was probably nothing I could have done to fix this, but the muffler guy told me that there was a guy about a mile back who has a bunch of lawnmowers in his yard who might help me. As it turns out, he was great. He moved with the patience and weight of an old man who has worked too hard his whole life. But he was very kind and into making everything work. It was just how I always romanticize help from strangers. So now I have a new gas tank.
This is the nice man who gave me the lawnmower gas tank.
Later in the afternoon, I took a wrong turn, going nearly fifteen stupid miles (yes every mile was stupid) out of my way. The views were gorgeous, but I definitely didn’t feel like seeing them twice. This was late in the day and everything hurt.
When I got to Longview, the place where I had worked out accommodations with a warmshowers.org member, I took several wrong turns, extending my journey a good hour longer than it should have been. That’s right, four wrong turns in one day. But the day ended with a warm shower, a delicious hamburger, baked beans, potato salad, an arm chair, a football game and a nice family. So I guess the day wasn’t all that bad.
So here I am, about 50 miles outside of Portland, taking a rest day. I’m afraid yesterday was too much for my feeble frame.
I find myself thinking about the difference between traveling solo and traveling with a partner. My thoughts right now are that traveling with a partner would be more conducive to fun, spontaneous interactions. I get self-conscious with the impression that I am perceived as homeless and in need of things. I feel that I am received with wariness. And I feel that I am less inclined to knock on the fire station’s door and strike up a conversation with a firefighter. I imagine that when you’re traveling with a partner, you look less needy, maybe less crazy and more like a young man on a bicycle tour. And I also believe in the magic that happens with a group where comfort zones are stretched a little and the bouncing around of ideas yields better ones. (The two minds are better than one phenomenon).
I’m not sure about all this, and maybe it’s just how I justify the lack of interesting interactions I haven’t been having.
In other news, I am beginning to think that I am doomed to be a domestic. Seeing mini-vans, well-taken care of houses, families, smoking chimneys, even witnessing sibling squabbles gives me peace inside. Now this is not what I was envisioning for my rugged solo journey. I was thinking more of getting in touch with my teddy Roosevelt rugged masculinity, but I guess you can’t fight fate…
John Shedd once said in 1928: “A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.” It is very tempting when I find a comfortable situation to hang out and enjoy it. And that is ok for a moment to rest and recuperate, but I think I would feel much better if I kept moving. Furthermore, the domesticity that I find so nice I believe comes from feeling protected and warm and loved. But I wonder how much of this is just me faltering before I truly leave the nest, and that one day I will feel comfortable with uncertainty and not being supported by family. I look forward to this day when I will feel fully at ease outside the harbor. I bet this will be the day when I’m wholly prepared to be a provider and protector. Until then, I’ll continue to be on my own, aching for the ever-present love of my mama and my aunty and my sissy and Leonard. Note: when I speak of love, I now employ bell hooks’ list of ingredients which includes: care, affection, recognition, respect, commitment, trust, and honest and open communication.
Oh, one of the cool things about biking is that you are starving most of the time. When you have food, can justify sending a little money, or find a generous soul, food is amazing. The even cooler thing about being starving while you bike is that you pass over all kinds of litter on the side of the road. Little nuggets of encouragement, telling you that when you reach the next town, there will be a Dairy Queen Blizzard waiting with your name on it. I believe that deep down, that is why people toss trash outside their window. They’re like the scratches on the post outside a house that tells other travelers that it is a friendly one. They’re artifacts of civilization, passively informing you that there is good to be found in the next town.
My last thought: I am constantly searching for an occupation that would suit me, and none come to mind. I worry that I will end up unhappily toiling for a capitalist who has no concern for my or my fellow worker’s well-being. If not that, then I worry that I will forever be unable to decide and will be stuck in a cycle of aimless, kinless, penniless vagrancy. I don’t truly believe this, but that is a good example of the type of anxieties that enter the mind a young burgeoning twenty-first century Odyssian consumerist. I do believe that one day I will find my niche. Until then, I think I have decided that my greatest asset (gift, or whatever you want to call it) is my unquestioning kindness and eagerness to just listen.
Lately however, I have gotten the impression that I’m not conveying this very well and I just kind of confuse people or make them uneasy. And I think this may be because I’m not really comfortable and confident when I approach people and this is perceptible. For a good interaction to happen, I think both people need to feel at ease if not confident. For me, I feel that said confidence will come soon, and that will make things much more enjoyable.
Wrap-up: I’ve biked about 220 miles. I average 40-50 miles a day, have taken a couple of rest days, and my knees are hurting. My wrists and elbows may end up being the worst injury of all. I’m feeling fatigued with life on the road. I waver between awe and bliss at the beautiful landscape to pining for a lawn chair, a hot burger, and the radio. The chain goes on, the chain comes off. The buckets unpacked, the buckets re-packed. The bum breaks in the leather saddle, the leather saddle breaks in the bum.
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