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"What's that?" you say. "Seven o'clock? You sure took your own sweet time. It takes you a full ninety minutes to pack up all of your gear?"
Yes, it does, thank you so much for asking. Sometimes more and rarely less. There are zippers to zipper and straps to snap, all in a specific order. This changes daily depending on the temperature, whether or not it is raining, whether or not it will rain, whether or not it has rained, what percentage of my laundry is dirty, how bad it stinks, and a number of other factors. There is a lot of uncomfortable squatting and fussy detail work with cold brittle fingers. I pause between steps to curse my lot and wonder which of my sins brought me to this.
But today, like I said, I was up early and was on the road by seven. It gets light around four-thirty and I thought I should get out of there before someone came and yelled at me or otherwise endeavored to make me feel poorly about myself. I don't need those negative vibes. I spent all day yesterday tripping on time and money and wound up talking myself into a head cold.
I have never been a positive person, but I can lie to myself when I have to. You might say I have done little else. I marched forth into a misty rain, my leprous little toes be damned. I wore my snot like a badge of honor. I kept my head held high. I walked ten miles well before noon and collapsed into a heap.
I was at the time just in front of the Pacific Springs(?) RV Park/Driving Range and with the gracious permission of the young woman at the counter, I went to sleep on their lawn. When I woke up I spent a pleasant hour talking with her, a reluctant Seattle transplant. She told me what it's like to be a hippie in cowboy country and shared all the county gossip. Cheers, Rachel! Study hard. You will make a beautiful lawyer.
I made it another five or six miles to Ephrata, where my legs went out from under me. I checked into the cheapest hotel in town and I am deeply ashamed. Some man of the road I am turning out to be. I don't get sick as a general rule and sixteen miles is as nothing to me. I let myself be defeated by trifles.
SEEN: just one rattlesnake, medium-sized, thoroughly mooshed by a truck. Poor little fellow. I hope I fare better on America's highways than these snakes seem to. But then I don't deserve to die.
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