Day 27

Day 27,

August 18, 2003.

Old railroad bridge

Good morning. It’s been a while since I last wrote in the journal. School homework takes a lot of time.

Well, in the morning I had to pack up fairly early, as few employees came to the park and started doing something around the pool. I didn’t want to wait for them to see the tent and investigating further who is in it and why, which usually associates with plenty of questions.

I stopped by the grocery store again and bought a frozen Mexican dinner with milk and bananas, which I ate at the bench near the gas station. After this, I rode another half a mile to the library, just to find out it was going to be closed for another several hours, so I decided not to wait and keep on going.

On the next gas station, which had a huge dining room with big windows, I set down and carefully looked at the map. Going north-west on 95 would pass through the little town of Cottonwood in 15 miles and eventually lead to Lewiston, a much larger city – 72 miles away, almost on Washington state border.

I got back on the road and headed towards Lewiston. The wind was blowing straight against me, so it was pretty hard to ride. Next little town was just several miles away and called Fenn. There I stopped at a little antique/thrift store, but found nothing really interesting. Just a little rest, already good.

The road was fairly straight now, going between fields and the wind didn’t seem to bother as much anymore. I rode into a classical small American town called Cottonwood.

The downtown, which was closest to the highway, consisted of dozen of stores situated along the main street.

Stores included grocery store, hardware, bar, barber’s shop, post office, Laundromat and a bank.

I stopped at the grocery store to get some more bananas with bottle of coke. Resting at the bench in the shade was extremely nice. For some reason I felt pretty weak and didn’t really want to cycle at that moment. So I decided to go look for another library. Unfortunately, the library here was community based and was open only for couple of hours two days a week, so of course it was closed now.

I went to antique store to check out what they had to show there, trying to fill the rest time with something useful.

Finally, in couple hours, I united all my mental powers and decided to get back on the bike and keep riding.

In another approximately 25-30 miles, near the town of Winchester, a great downhill started. There were trees on both sides of the road, so it felt much cooler in shade.

The downhill showed to be extremely pleasant and lasted for nearly 45 minutes, going along this beautiful, cool and quite forest. My mood rose for good and right in that moment I saw something definitely worth stopping – an old wooden railroad bridge.

I stopped by the sign telling about tunnels and bridges in this area (refer to pictures). Then I moved the bike where I could see it; took the camera and went further to explore the bridge.

I don’t know how it looks on the picture, but from close view, it amazes how tall it is, especially if you thing that it has to support those heavy trains way up in the air and it’s only made of wood.

While exploring the base, I saw a sign scratched on one of the beams – someone’s name and date – 1943. It’s pretty amazing to think about it. Someone made this sign way before I was born – even before my father was born. It’s interesting to imagine that this piece of wood was here – through all the rains, snows, hurricanes, hail, fog etc – with this sign, when let’s say my father was only learning to walk… or graduating from school… etc. It’s amazing to think that so many things are happening in this same time frame that we are completely unaware of. For example, right now, your future wife or husband is doing something you have no slightest idea about. Or you future house is being built, or car…etc. Ok, maybe I lost the point. Let me move on. J

So, I explored the foundation and decided to climb on the top of the bridge. This wasn’t very hard as there was a not too step incline made of big rocks – near by.

As soon as I got on top of this bridge, it became clear that it has not been used in a while, since the tracks were rusty. It was also amazing how narrow the top surface was, especially considering it had to be stable enough to carry a heavy train. I walked to the middle of the bridge, being pretty careful – it was actually pretty high, and I didn’t want to fall off this bridge. J

So, after about 40 minutes, I got back on the bike and kept riding further down the road, which was still descending. The speed was extremely nice and it was easy to pedal.

In about 10 minutes, I was passing through some little gas station/convenient store on the right, and decided to stop by to ask about the bridge.

A young guy and an older lady were inside taking care of the store. They were very friendly and answered all my questions to their best ability. It turned out that this railroad line has not been used since 1960s, but some businessman from Lewiston, had a plan of creating a train tour on this line.

In another 4-5 miles, I was passing by little houses, cows, little creeks. One nasty fly ended its life in my eye, slowing me down for at last 5 minutes to remove its remaining, as I couldn’t keep an eye open.

The time, meanwhile, was approaching 6 o’clock, creating a beautiful, cool, evening atmosphere, with a terrific, big setting sun. The road became much busier as it was getting closer to Lewiston.

At one section of the road, before the bridge across the river, there was a construction so only one lane was opened and people regulated the traffic with stop and go signs manually. It happened in such a way, that I was almost in the beginning of the line when they showed a stop sign and stopped the traffic going forward. In other words, there were couple of dozens of cars behind me and I could not ride on the shoulder, as there wasn’t one. The bridge was pretty long, so it would take me several minutes to ride across either way. As soon as the “go sign” was shown, I took off and rode as fast as I could across the bridge. Unfortunately the surface was also pretty rough, so it was very far from nice. Drivers in the cars behind, seemed to understand, however, and thanks to them, didn’t honk hurrying me up.

In another 30 minutes I arrived in Lewiston. This is a big industrial city with population of 30,904 (year 2000).

The main problem was that the actual city, was up the hill, there I had to climb extremely nasty little hill just get to Mc Donald’s. There I ate a pretty nice cheeseburger meal and rested a little. Then I found out that in order to get to Wal Mart, I had to climb even more, and this turned out even nastier, because the road was dark, traffic intense and the hill extremely steep.

At Wal-Mart I got a can of apple juice and when it was completely dark, went to search for the place to set up the tent.

The problem here was that in the lower portion of town, from where I just climbed, there were not suitable places for camping, going further uphill in hope of getting out of town and finding a better place, didn’t help much, as after another couple of miles, it was still a CITY. So, desperately, I had to find something. And here it was, a dollar store, the back of which was hidden in big old trees. I looked at the schedule and it revealed that tomorrow the store was supposed to open only at 9 am. So I decided to set up the test there and leave earlier, let’s say at 7:30. This is just what I did right then.

Today – 78 miles, total 1123.

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