Day 29,
In the morning, I was wakened up by some construction worker, who started making noise on the parking lot. My tent could not really be seen, at least not if one is trying to find it, but even it was, I didn’t really care. It was already morning, I was rested and it’s not really illegal to be on the territory of public school. J
The weather was warm and sun was shining.
In few minutes after I got out of the tent, a lady – teacher most likely, was walking by the corridor and saw my tent. She asked a quick question something like, - traveling?, and then even told me that there were showers near the baseball field. I thought this was very nice of her.
I packed the tent and started riding downhill back to the main road in town.
Now I decided to visit the university.
It is Washington State University located in
The neighborhood was composed of old, one-storage houses. On one of the streets, I saw a very old looking church, more like a castle. There was a fence around the church, and windows were closed by large pieces of plywood.
I walked around the fence, and saw a trail that goes under one portion of the fence, and then to the church. Probably local kids use this made it into their playground. I went by the trail to look closer at the stones and try to determine the age of it. There were some entrances, and I could see a big, dark room, with colorful windows, but decided not leave the bike unattended and not to get inside. There could also be some homeless, and I didn’t really want to encounter them in that gloomy looking church.
I asked someone on the side walk, how to get to the university and it took me about 20 minutes to finally get there. Somehow campus is located above the rest of the city, so I had to ride up few steep hills.
When I got to campus, it appeared to be very nice looking, in an old traditional style. The place felt very safe and there was an atmosphere of that purely American well-being, often felt in small, rural, conservative communities, where strangers are looked at with suspicion and way of life is slow, stable and consistent.
I went into a nice looking building – New Holland Library. There I spent nearly an hour and a half checking e-mail and browsing the web. I asked two girls sitting at the next table, where the sport center was, but they couldn’t understand what I was talking about. So, when I used other words for a building that has showers and locker rooms, like coliseum, fitness center, physical education building; one of these name suddenly turned the light in their heads as they recognized the familiar name, and told me where that building was. I tried to also ask them general things about the university, like how many students go here and what the basic tuition is, but unfortunately they couldn’t answer such question and looked really confused.
Finally, I realized that I had to keep moving and headed back to highway 27 North. The road from campus was going steeply downhill, passing by nice apartments occupied by students. It felt like it could be nice to live here, but they all had to bike uphill every morning. J There were quite many bikes locked around trees and fences.
Highway 27 was pretty pleasant, with mostly fields around and a very light traffic.
In about 10 minutes, I saw one-story building on the left, approximately 300 feet from the road.
When I biked closer to the building, there was a little chain closing the drive way, which I of course just walked around.
The main entrance of the building was on the other side, away from the highway. This was actually a church, which seemed to be closed for the summer. The steps at the entrance were in the shade, so I decided to seat there and eat. At this time I only had bread, peanut butter, can of peas and water. It was pretty good, especially in such a peaceful atmosphere.
I also walked around the building few times and looked inside the windows. It could really be easy to break in, if someone wanted to, since the place was far from the road and facing the foods. Inside, I could see some tables with stacks of paper plates, cups, etc, so probably sometimes people gather here for pick-nicks.
After gotting back on the road, I realized that there was very little water left and started looking for a place to fill the water bottles up.
In approximately 20 minutes, I saw a house with a big barn next to it, and decided to pull off, since the door to the barn was open and a big, nice truck was parked inside.
I left the bike near the road since the house was significantly lower than the road and I didn’t want to do the extra work of pulling the heavy bike back up in few minutes. Plus, I could constantly keep an eye on it.
I walked to the opening of the big barn, and called out “excuse me?”, since the was no one in the sight.
A skinny man of around 70 walked out with a puzzled expression on his face. He was wearing jeans and a typical worker’s shirt. I asked politely if he had any running water to fill up my water bottles.
He told me to walk in and directed to the sink, where I filled them up.
The big truck inside was looking pretty interesting. There was also another huge truck engine sitting at the wall.
I started asking the man about the
truck. Turned out, it was an old Kenworth (something like
this), from 1970, which he bought new. The man is using this truck to haul
farmer’s goods around
It was very nice to talk to this guy, but soon I got back on the road. It was mostly flat and windy.
At one point I rode down to a little town, located on both sides of the rail road. There were few tiny stores on one main street. Couple of school kids was playing around the entrance to the store. I parked the bike outside, which they absolutely didn’t pay any attention to, and went inside to check for food. I bought few bananas and soda, ate it at the bench outside and crossed the rail road.
The road was now pretty narrow and started going a bit uphill turning from left to right. The side of the road had forgotten wild grass 4-5 feet high. On one of the turns, I saw an old house, about 100 feet from the road. The driveway had tall grass, so no one was using it for quite a while. I left the bike near the road, and went inside to explore. First I walked around the house to make sure it was not inhabited. There was an old barn with no doors. Inside it was full of household junk. J Well, I decided to see if the house had doors open. The door had a piece of plywood covering the place where a window used to be. In the crack between the door and this plywood I could see a table knife placed in such a way that it kept the door closed.
I pulled the knife out and walked into the house.
I was actually pretty nervous, as it seemed like breaking into someone’s house, but it was purely for the purpose of exploring. I was not going to take anything, even if it was something valuable.
Well, inside was very interesting. I walked around old rooms. It was quite, but there was a sense of someone standing there looking at me, maybe a ghost of the old inhabitant. J Just kidding. But the house indeed seemed like a big family was living here before. Kitchen had lots of spoons, forks, pots, plates.
I looked at the news papers laying around and they were all yellow with a date of 1988.
Then I decided to walk upstairs. I carefully stepped on the wooden stairs, making sure it was not rotten. Hey, I had a feeling that I can find a dead body on top, or something. There were 4 rooms around. They were all bed rooms. One had a bed inside, papers and other junk was laying everywhere, but it was all left by original owners, it looked like. It was kind of sad scene. Lonely bed in an empty room, with little light going through dirty windows… and it was like this for years.
Another room was the biggest, maybe parent’s bedroom. Inside I saw a very old bike, rusty, with thick fenders and of course only one gear. It was a Schwinn, and probably from around 1930s. Here is roughly how the bike looked (1 or 2).
Then I got back on the road with big
desire to cover more distance today. There was already enough of emotions and
exploration, so I was in a great mood for some heard pedaling. Luckily, a
straight highway started very soon. It was 195 going north to
One thing I didn’t mention yet, is that in
In 2 hours of very fast riding, mostly downhill, with occasional areas of mosquitoes in the air and a beautiful sunset on the left, I covered 35 miles according to odometer. So, it was probably already territory of the city, but there were still no exits or any kind of places I could stop at. Finally, it got completely dark. The road became very busy with very fast moving traffic. I had a rear LED flashing light and was very glad to have a front head light. In the time when cars pass, with no street lights, the road would be completely dark, so I could run over something that could damage the rim, throw me off the bike or puncture the tire. So, this part of riding was pretty stressful.
Eventually, in 20 more minutes, I saw a first gas station. Somehow I managed to get across the highway (gas station was on the opposite side), and finally got off the bike. The gas station was Shell, or something like that, with dozens of pumps. Bright lights, people walking in and out, it made me feel better. I was back to civilization and felt safer.
I found payphone and dialed Jenny’s number. She picked it up and asked me where I was. Well, I told her that I was still on 195, but wasn’t sure how far into the city it was. The fact that I was on the gas station didn’t tell her anything – Spokane is a large city. She told me, however, that sooner or later I was supposed to cross the Interstate 90, and gave me directions afterwards. Well, I actually could something like a freeway in the distance ahead.
That was indeed I-90. Supposedly, after riding under the interstate, I should have been only about 5 miles away from where we agreed to meet. I tried to count the right exits off the highway, and finally got off into the residential neighborhood, which was pretty dark. I really was not sure if I was on the right way and for a while there was no one to ask. Finally, I was passing by the driveway where someone was getting out of the car, so I asked for directions and have been told that the road I am looking for, is still ahead.
When I turned on that road, it was absolutely not nice area to bike in. The road was dark, it was going uphill along some old factories and railroad tracks. I was tired and wanted to get to some nicer area. Finally, I recognized the shopping center I was in a year ago and called Jenny again. She told me that she was going to be there in few minutes, and I waited inside of some snack bar or fast food. In about 10 minutes, her friend Alex showed up and I went outside and met Jenny. She showed me the direction to the house where I arrived in about 5 minutes.
Jenny lived in a two bedroom apartment on the first floor. Her roommate’s name is Ryan.
Well, I brought the bike inside and had the nice chance to take a real shower and check e-mail. Jenny was very hospital, but I felt more comfortable sleeping on the floor on my mat in the sleeping bag. So that’s what I did.
I was tired by this time, but happy and
glad to realize that I made it that far – almost to the
northern edge of the
Today’s total – 79 miles.
Return to Day 28 No pictures taken Continue to Day 30
