From outside Seattle to Portland

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That day was somewhat tough and in no way was it an advantage being on a bicycle, I passed through town after town of take away food places and the smell of fumes from the passing cars made me thinks that I wouldn't be missing much keeping a constant peddle all day. It began to rain lightly which I didn't see as a huge problem until it started soaking through my pants, I didn't want to break my momentum by digging into my rear panniers for my waterproof pants which I knew were buried in the bottom somewhere.

I eventually routed onto a country road off the highway and pulled into a farmers market where a lady began cheering me as I pulled in. I left my drenched bike leant against a pole just at the entrance and walked my drenched self over to my new fan. Kim was in her 50's and from New Zealand, she told me she had won the green card lottery and moved to the area close to Olympia in Washington a year ago with her husband and three kids and has been very happy since. She was someone I remember because it wasn't just her accent, but her enthusiasm for what I was doing and character that made me feel close to home it was very appreciated on that gloomy day. I made my rounds along the various stalls all selling simple but healthy and organic things, I bought tomatoes, basil and some home made pesto sauce that was ten dollars for a jar but after I tried it I couldn't refuse. Kim took a photo with me before I left and told me I would be famous one day. I wonder now in the age of Instagram and Facebook how many people would be classified as having fame? There are a lot of people doing a lot of cool shit and fame resides in the circle of those familiar with your doings.
I rode another 5 hours or so in the drizzle up some descent size hills through forest and by the time I reached the campground south of Olympia I was so hungry that my excitement over eating my farmers market goodies with some cous cous was honestly like the merging of heaven into my deprived stomach. I cooked that food in the wet darkness and ate it quicker than any meal I've ever slapped onto my plate, including times in the navy where we were practicing being at war stations and had to treat meals like they were something we would die from if we stopped to taste them. The tomatoes were the best I'd ever eaten, no sourness at all and the homemade pesto sauce came from a secret recipe that no processed food in a supermarket could ever come close to. I set my tent up in the rain, hid my bike behind a tree near my site, had a half hour shower, came back and crawled into my sleeping bag happy to have everything I needed to support what I was doing. The next day I heaped my soppy tent and gear onto my bike and got riding early, I knew I had a big day in front of me with 75 miles or so to cover. I had a warmshower host named Sean in Longview directly south who said I could stay at his place. I stopped at a roadside cafe where I made some breakfast on the tables outside with the owners permission, ordered some coffee and proceeded by following my Garmins long zig zagging directions until late afternoon without much of a break, my thighs were burning going up some of the hills but I made good headway until I was about 10 miles from my hosts place. Without a topographical map I had no idea what kind of elevation I was at or had to go through, when I thought I was within an hour of rest I reached a hill with a screaming grade that I had to push my bike up the whole way, it had no shoulder and cars were roaring past me the whole time. There was one guy who must have been a cyclist and tried to make a joke of it stopping his car to say'it's just a small hill'. It went on forever and kept going I was mentally and physically fatigued by the time I reached the wide highway that gave me a flat ride to my stop. I got there well past sundown and it just looked like a regular house, nothing special. I knocked on the door and I could tell Sean was a regular pot smoker, we went round the back where he told me I could set my tent up under a tree, the house had a kind of gross, musky feel and the backyard smelled of dog shit. There was a dog in the back so that made sense. His friend came out who was super quiet and we spent about 15 minutes talking on a table in the backyard that had a broken chair and a low ceiling close by that I nearly hit my head on. They rolled up a joint and I declined the offer to have some, I gave them some subway cookies that I had bought earlier for them as a gift that they took to like seagulls on unattended fish and chips. Sean was working in an organic farm close by he told me and had done a big bike tour across the states, east to west. We had to go through this kind of 'trust' phase before he would let me into the house, I appreciated him accepting my request but I got annoyed with the lack of real generosity in his nature, normally warmshowers hosts cook some food for the cyclists that come through, as his hosts had probably done for him but he told me he didn't have any spare. He also said there was a female cyclist coming through and because she was arriving late he would offer her the couch, inside. I didn't mind really. We went in the house and hung out around the table in the living room, he had two other guys living there both very young who were big smokers of the marijuana as well. We talked politics and thought I liked Sean as I was beginning to see his kind heart I could see he had taken far too many hallucinogens. Words like energy, vibration, like, meditation, manifest came up in nearly every one of his sentences it seemed. I'd seen these effects on other people before, and on myself and I didn't like it as I could see how disconnected from reality he was. Anyway the other housemates were too young to drink but I offered to buy some beer for Sean and I if someone could drive us. We all rolled into a 1970 something red pickup that had such a loud engine that it sounded like a beast under the bonnet, he had picked the car up cheap but with its gas mileage I wondered how much money he'd save, the thing could have powered a truck. We got back and drank a few brewskies, he texted the girl and told her there was beer as she was still fifteen miles off, once she got there she said it was what motivated her to keep going as she was considering wild camping somewhere. She was in her early twenties and was pretty reserved, she looked like she just wanted to have the beer and sleep straight away but had to feign interest in our conversation about American politics for another hour while there was weed smoke mixing into every available crevice of oxygen. I had a shower in the bathroom that was absolutely disgusting, worse than you'd expect in a third world country, drank one more beer while Sean showed us his fire twirling techniques he uses at raves and we all crashed out. I got up early to keep with his work schedule and saw the girl leaving just as I was walking into the house, she had no attachment to the place or people whatsoever and gave a weak farewell. I cooked up some oatmeal and chatted with Sean a bit more, he told me his meditations were getting very good and he had refrained from masturbation and advised me to do the same as its supposedly bad for you. We parted on good terms and I was happy to have met him as he was on his own path. Having an early start that day was good as I knew I only had a short ride to get to Portland, a city that I had heard good things about. I followed highway 30 for most of the trip which runs into the city via north east. I was about 6 hours into the day, which was mostly flat and easy when there was a bank up in the traffic, school was finishing up so everyone was picking up kids. I did something I had always wanted to do and took the parking lane to pass the stuck cars, I thought of how many times I had been in stuck in traffic and imagined having something with two wheels. Everything was going great until a red light turned green up ahead and gave one of the cars enough room to speed up and turn into an upcoming entrance to some shops, I was cycling in a lazy kind of style with my hands resting on the top of handlebars, my brakes were out of reach. He was driving the same speed as my bike and started turning into my lane, I couldn't do anything to stop it as it all happened too quickly, he darted into the entrance and cut me off just clipping my front wheel. It threw me onto the pavement with one pannier coming off and he just sped off, I think he had seen that he'd done it but chose not to stop. Really though I wasn't worried, I wasn't damaged and neither was the bike. The whole incident felt strange, like I was never in any real danger and I was were everything was where it was supposed to be. This lady stopped who told me to call the police, I kind of knew it was a waste of time as nobody had his plate number but I needed a break anyway. She told me to wait there while she picked her daughter up from school until she gets back, ten minutes later she returned and I used her phone to talk to a pretty descent policeman who simply said that they couldn't do anything assuming they could find the guy if I didn't press charges which would mean returning to the states in 6 months for a court hearing. I chose to let it go and thanked the lady for her time. Some more highway 30 with many trucks rattling past I made it just outside Portland and was looking forward to getting to my hostel I had booked earlier. I had to climb some descent hills and I eventually came to one of many bridges into Portland that I had to cross to get into the city. Why my Garmin does the things it does sometimes I'll never know. Bridges are always a bit scary to cross as they are are narrower than the road and have no shoulder, making you feel trapped as you can't just stop and pull over somewhere. This bridge was for cars to get into the city as quick as possible, not for cyclists. I caused chaos on that long bridge and many cars didn't even want to pass me so I ended up causing a bank up in peak hour traffic, I thought of my friend Shiraz and how much he would have enjoyed being me at that moment. I was that guy right then, that annoying arrogant prick throwing my antiquated machine into the realms of fuel and fire. The drivers would have hated me, I was part scared, part adrenaline and part humor at how much power as a cyclist I had on the open road, I'm not destroying the planet, motherfucker. I arrived at the cyclist oriented hostel some time later that was clean and full of friendly people, my gear was in the basement and these two guys, one from New York in his 40's named Luke and a young guy from Nevada named Rick were in Portland doing a bicycle mechanics course. They offered to do a free tune on my Fuji which fixed some gear issues I was having, I offered to buy them beers as thanks as it saved me a trip to a store somewhere. Luke seemed pretty cool at first but when I came back from having a shower he was arguing with a male guest from Belgium who must have been Vegan about the black people shot by the police in the news recently. He was very much on the side of the cops and agreed with use of lethal force if people don't obey orders given by lawmen. He was very overbearing with his viewpoints and showed little remorse with his attacks on the vegans ideals making him feel weak for his dietary choices. His thick New York accent and bald head was enough for his small audience to listen. This was before he started drinking. Myself, Luke and Rick went out to a small bar just a block away and we ordered a pitcher of beer, this is about where Luke's rant began. The empty pieces of ourselves get filled temporarily, all the time. Almost every day or night there will be small things to fill in the pits caused by our own unhappiness, a $5 coffee can sometimes be enough to numb or escape the pain of going to work early in the morning for example. A person of strength and strong belief in themselves can make others feel a sense of being in the right place, finally having someone to lead. The reality of the human kingdom though is that intelligence with words, even just enough to dominate, dictates societal structure even in a small group like this. I gave Luke the time as I thought some of his strength might rub off onto me, his New York comprehensions and perception. It was all just a waste of time though and his momentum had built up so much in a matter of an hour or two that there was no room left for alternative opinion or feedback. There was Luke and his endless tirade which I should have known was one of the four control dramas that operate to source energy from other people. Anyway I shouted them the drinks and I was grateful that my bike was in good condition, just before we left the bar Luke took a restroom break and Rick quietly expressed how sick he was of hearing Luke's opinions on that course they'd been on for a week together. The one interesting thing Luke ranted about was the use EMP weapons, or electro magnetic pulse technology that he said would destroy every electric circuit on the planet if used. It got me thinking when he was talking about the 50 miles his Dad drives in the snow every day and what he would do if his car, phone and everything else just stopped working. It is true, these days we are completely reliant on technology. Luke and I were sharing a room, I stayed quiet and didn't respond to Luke's further responses incase he started up again, I was mentally drained. silent and crawled into bed as I didn't want him to start up again.

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