Day 2: Longview to Centralia

Woke up at 5:30 AM, changed the flat tube and was surprised to find that it was punctured on the inside, close to the hub. Perhaps it was just a freak accident.

When you wake up early and ride all day in the heat, your mind goes all over the place. Being alone does that to a person. You think a mile a minute.

My MAcGyver-style handlebar camera mount also works well for the Garmin Nuvi 225 GPS. After a long detour, the GPS earned its value today.

My trusty travel backpack is doing well, however it’s too heavy. I might visit the post office and send something home so to lighten my load.

The little American flag was picked up off the shoulder of the road yesterday. It waves in the wind and I pretend it helps me get seen by drivers, which for the most part steer clear of me.

After a hit of OJ, an English Muffin and two frozen hardboiled eggs (they were in the mini fridge overnight), I was off and riding. It was actually cold outside in the morning—and very humid. I fantasized that it would stay cool all day. However, I knew better. My early start was designed to avoid the sun.

It was so cold, in fact, that I put on three layers near the gate by these horses. They seemed disappointed that I wasn’t there to feed them.

By far the most common trash item on the road side is single-use beer and soft drink containers. They were everywhere.  I was going to photograph them, but you know what litter looks like.

As I passed by a high school I noticed a tiny BP with a circle and line through it painted on their graduation rock. It reminded me why I’m doing this ride.

Bicycling for a long distance is interesting. If I’m singing songs in my head it means things are good. If I’m thinking about my body it means things are grueling. I welcomed getting lost today because it distracted me from the pain.

I’m not a young man anymore. My back is hurting. My ring fingers are experiencing numbness. I’ve got a bad back. Having a weak spine has prevented me from continuing with Mixed Martial Arts.

There comes a point in your life when you realize that you just can’t do everything you used to do.

Reaching that point of actualization also means that there are many things you didn’t yet do that you won’t be able to take on. It’s part of accepting and coping with reality… or growing old.

A train passed by the Farmer’s Association moments after that photo was taken. It was fast and loud. Anything that got in its way would certainly be destroyed.

I was blindly following the GPS today. Somehow it managed to take me up hill after hill after hill. I’d get to the top and then there’d be another one.

For every hill you climb you get to glide down the other side. Except today! I wrote a poem. It’s called Hills.

Think you’re done
Round the bend
There’s another one

Samantha told me to turn left (and up another steep hill). I had to walk the bike. It was 87 degrees at 11 AM and my knee was hurting. I followed the instructions all the way to the very end of a paved street. When the road turned to gravel I began to think about turning back. The GPS knew it was “off road” and I was only .6 miles from the hotel. It was ridiculous but I imagined she was somehow taking me through a back route since she knew I was on a bike.
 
At some point, the road became less gravel and more grassy trail. I was on a forest trail near a blackened fire pit littered with shotgun shells. It was one of those moments where you know, despite the fact that everything seems wrong, that you’re going to see it through to the end. I entertained myself by continuing.

The trail came to a dead end. “Navigate off road,” Samantha announced. That was it; I turned back. The address from the Internet for the hotel was completely off. I was miles west of my destination and attempting to locate a hotel in the forest. Honestly, I was too embarrassed to take a picture.

If you don’t know where you’re going it doesn’t matter how you get there.

Back on the logging road, I took a standing break and my bike rolled out from under me and landed on its side next to a snake that had been in the wrong place at the wrong time the night before.

The way back down the mountain somehow seemed mostly uphill. I checked the GPS and looked up just in time to see a baby snake go directly under my front and back tire. Later in the day I noticed the American flag was missing. So far I’ve killed one snake, lost a banana, a flag and perhaps my mind.

Reality and fantasy are two different things. I live in a fantasy. When I came to a dead end at the top of a logging road and the GPS told me to continue into the woods, I believed in the fantasy that Samantha was going to deliver me to the destination instead of the reality that was my situation. But sometimes you don’t know if you don’t try, right? So I’m riding 450 miles to Protest the BP Oil Disaster. Does it make a difference? Maybe in a fantasy.

All of this got me thinking about extremism and people who do crazy things for stuff they can’t see but believe are there or might happen. 

I passed a man walking down the road with a hiking stick. He had a vest on that said he’s walking 1200 miles for CODA. When I asked what CODA was he pointed to a red truck that was half a mile up the road and said to ask the person inside for a flyer. I did. The driver happily gave me a brochure containing the information you can find here.

Single use items are quite possibly the most destructive environmental product on the planet. Cars at least serve a very much needed and useful purpose. I suppose individually wrapped plastic forks serve a purpose as well. I got one today from the deli counter at the supermarket and will take it with me tomorrow.

It’s easy to point at beer and soda containers on the roadside and think stupid careless people threw them there. However, stupid careless people (myself included) use plastic forks and they end up as litter someplace.

I’m not sure that this ride makes sense. I’m not using automobile petroleum but I am using resources that wouldn’t have otherwise been used.

Once the GPS got the correct location of the hotel it delivered me safely. Only one person yelled at me today, “Get off da rowd!” He was in the rear passenger side seat of the car. Maybe it was the same person who yelled yesterday.

It’s time to sleep.

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