Day Fifteen, This Little Piggy

I had a big breakfast, a James burger. It must have been one o'clock. I had been all morning doctoring my feet in a Rite-Aid parking lot. It's a nice way to meet people.

A James burger--I had ordered blindly, I just liked the name--turned out to be two thickish ground beef patties, a deep-fried Polish sausage, onions, mushrooms, Swiss cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, and a slab of deep-fried ham, all on a sesame seed bun. It came with a pound or two of thick-cut fried potatoes. I ate it with a knife and fork. I was just getting a steam on when the chef arrived at my table. "Forgot your bacon," he says. He handed me two thick strips on a plate. I added them to the pile.

I was until two weeks ago a vegetarian. I had been for eight long years. I thought it would polish my karma somehow and make me a better person. But I am still the same sour shit and a little extra protein never hurt anyone.

It has not done my toes much good, though. Don't mind if I share the details. The thick skin on my little toes, developed over years of hiking an extra ten miles a day, has been so pinched and overheated that it has separated from the toe itself and, with a few artful snips of my nose hair scissors, it can be removed whole, inside out like a sock. What remains is the fresh bright pink new skin within. It is papery and still very tender.

I understand snakes go through a similar process. That is why they are so mean.

Because it hurts, I tell you, like the worst kind of toothache. It hurts like a broken heart. It spreads up into your muscles and bones and makes them cold and numb. And it can't be bandaged or braced against. All you can do is suffer.

And walk. I did walk. I walked. I did. I made it a full seven miles. It was my worst day yet but I got to the point where I couldn't go another step. And I checked into a hotel. Again. I am spending far too much money. And I am moving slower and slower each day and America keeps getting bigger.

I have made it as far as Soap Lake, Washington, back into the sage brush again. Soap Lake advertises its healing waters, a la Baden-Baden. They contain all manner of minerals and some sort of fishy oil. They too are home to parasites which, if not promptly rinsed off, will leave you covered in itchy red bumps and, I wish to golly I was making this up, "barnacles".

I was torn as to whether to avail myself of this opportunity. On the one hand I could do with a little magic healing. On the other I have open wounds on my feet. I did wade in for a little while and I felt ridiculous. One doesn't always know how to behave in healing waters. How long are you supposed to stay in? Are they like holy water where a drop or two does the trick or are you really supposed to soak? There were people around so I just sort of stood there, up to my ankles, gazing at the horizon and trying to look philosophical. I gave it five minutes and left. Healing waters kind of stink.

I cannot say they have done me any noticable good. Tomorrow I will soldier on. James burgers must be earned.


MET, at a crossroads outside of Soap Lake, Mr. Wilson, a very old man. He wore a green plaid jacket and a black cowboy hat. He drove a big sedan. "You'll get there faster if you jog," he advised me. "What are you, some kind of idiot?"

I don't guess Mr. Wilson does much internetting, but God bless you, you grumpy old fart.

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Day Fourteen, Roadkill

LWoke up at five-thirty in a sprinkling rain with snoofles up in my nose. I wasn't about to let that stop me. I was on the road by seven.

"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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Day Thirteen, Gloom, Despair & Agony on Me

Went to sleep in a cold and steady rain and woke up in the sun's warming glow. It was nine o'clock and tractors were rumbling by on their way to tend my orchard. No one yelled at me; they just looked, open-mouthed, as if I were a space alien or a man wearing a chicken for a hat.

The skies were blue with white fluffy clouds. The weather was perfect for walking. There was a song in my heart but it did not stick. I felt like absolute crap. The road took me steadily uphill. Both little toes were throbbing. My new shoes hurt less than my old ones, but what pain they do allow is perfect.

Completed my two-hour walk to Trinidad(?!),WA in three and one half short hours, very much looking forward to a spot of breakfast. Turns out Trinidad consists of one somewhat understocked minimart and a resort of some sort a good distance off my road on the water. The fellow running the minimart, a Republican and more or less from my same neighborhood, was kind to let me rest there an hour or so and taught me something about motorboat racing. Cheers, Ken! Keep 'er keel side down.

Feeling no better after my rest, I was in no way encoraged by what amounted to a near vertical climb stretching two miles up towards Quincy. Even the trucks were struggling with that one. They weren't moving too much faster than I was. At the top I found a rest area; closed, it turned out. I walked around the gate, took off my shoes and sprawled across the lawn.

"We don't generally encourage that," said Hector, the man from the WSDOT who had come to open the place to traffic. He was very decent about it. "The grass is new, you see."

He was pretty busy but we talked a bit. He seemed like a very nice man. I am guessing Hector is a Mexican American. There are a lot of Mexican Americans around here. They came to pick fruit decades and decades ago and just sort of stuck around. Everywhere there are signs in Spanish and Mexican music playing. One hates to generalise about other cultures; it's a good way to piss people off. Nevertheless, I have reached some conclusions.

I like them. To a man, the Mexican Americans I have met have been polite, friendly, and demonstrated a good sense of humour. As I understand it they are a religious people, care very much for their families and work like absolute demons. Their music is good, their food is delicious and their women are beautiful. Throw open the borders, I say. If we have to send a few of our less productive citizens south to make room for them all, so be it. And I will almost certainly be one of the first ones deported.

My hour and a half at the rest area didn't buoy me up either. I was tired and starting to chafe. I limped on towards Quincy which kept getting further away. I would see it on the horizon, walk for an hour, and there it would be still. I was getting pretty hungry; I stopped once at a shop selling "Asparagus, Shakes, & Wine." I went for a shake. Blackberry. It was good but it didn't really help.

Quincy, though I confess I have never heard of it, seems to be a pretty good-sized town. Even after I reached the city limits, I still had to pass miles of fruit warehouses before I got to downtown. Ate, finally, at seven thirty or so and was seriously considering a fleabag motel but it was too late in the day to justify the expense. Instead I wound up in this, the worst camping site of my trip. I am between the highway and an irrigation ditch, glaringly visible from the road. I don't know if I'm allowed to camp here; I may be evicted at any time.

I am sore and I'm sick and I feel like crap and I could really do with a poop. But that would be contrary to the take nothing/leave nothing policy by which I justify my trespass. Better luck tomorrow, one hopes, one hopes.

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Day Twelve, Cruel Shoes

Find me in among the peach trees. Or possibly plum. You can't lead a horticultue. They are fruit trees, at any rate, of that I am certain, and are no doubt some of the best. The otherwise barren hills of central Washington supply the world with fruit. I once saw a Wenatchee apple crate on a dusty roadside in Mumbai. Later that day I saw a corpse, but that is beside the point.

Our friends at Google tell me I hiked 17 miles, uphill and in the rain. It has been just pissing down since I left my hotel, two minutes past checkout time. I had one or two things to do in town, but by 12:30 I was on a decommissioned railroad bridge, crossing the mighty Columbia. I got a passing hobo to take my picture (to be shared, someday, someday) and gave him a dollar and seventy-five cents in change for his trouble. I ain't so very well-off myself, but you have never seen a fellow who more looked he could use $1.75.

It is tempting on these cold rainy days to feel sorry for myself, but there are literal millions of people wandering around America every day. Without my state-of-the-art camping equipment and low-limit credit card. And without the Gore-Tex® raincoat my mother insisted I have. Cheers, Mom. I am one of the best-dressed bums in the country.

I, too, am the proud owner of a new pair of hiking boots. $100 with new gel insoles. I would have paid hundreds more. I left home in what were more or less running shoes and they sliced my feet into shreds. I was sure I could walk thirty miles a day in them, but I failed to appreciate what a forty-pound pack does to a fellow's geometry. And his toes.

Let's all take a moment to salute Mr. Kevin Myrbo of Famous Footwear in Wenatchee. He spent a good hour listening to my complaints and answering my questions. I cannot tell you how heartening it is to go into a shoe store in modern America and meet someone who knows something about shoes. Sa-lute!

Which is not to say my foot problems ard entirely behind me. My feet stayed dry but they've got some adjusting to do. I am seriously considering donating the little toe on my left foot to science. Poor little thing. At a truckstop I chopped the end off it with my trusty nose hair scissors. I gathered up the bits, as a courtesy, except one big piece which was carted off by a nearly microscopic ant. The buzzards and the worms may have to wait years to get me, but the ants are getting a taste.

Leaving Wenatchee I am heading more or less south, following the Columbia River. It is a grand river as rivers go, perhaps not in a class with the Mississippi or the Nile, but I am convinced it could give the Thames and the Danube a run for their money. I was born not too awfully far from it. Here it runs between high rock hills and sage brush covered plateaus. It is just the sort of country in which one expects to see rattlesnakes and, fear for me, friends, I have.

Three of them. The first was a big one, long and fat. He had been thoroughly squarshed. The second was tiny, maybe a foot long. He scared the hell out of me. I had mistaken him for a length of bungee cord, flung from a passing truck. The third was no bigger but I saw him first. I stopped and watched him for a while. I had some notion of learning his evil ways, but I can't say I reached any conclusions. But from a distance I thought I would make him my friend. I decided to call him Alger.

I would not wholly object to Alger and all his slithering, vile, hateful little friends dropping dead off the face of the earth. Venomous or not, it makes no difference to me. I hate them and want them to die. "Nature's balance," you cry, "the Great Chain of Life! We would be overrun by rodents!"

Well, I can answer that, eco-Smartypants. The solution, you see, is owls. Owls would step in pick up the slack and do it elegantly. I cannot see why any right-thinking person would object to an increase in the owl population. I can't say I have ever seen an owl. I think it would be cool.

But until the world comes around to my way of thinking, I shall struggle with girlish fear. I don't mean the dread and uneasiness I have had with me all along, but real, bone-shaking fear. Damn, I hate snakes. I had a few mile left in me when I put up my tent, but I stopped here because, in addition to being footsore and cold, and soaked to my very bones, it was the first patch of ground I have seen all day that didn't look like the rattlesnake diorama at the Woodland Park Zoo.

OTHER WILDLIFE: All manner of hawks, two or three examples of what I want to call osprey, and some odd liitle critters that look like really fat squirrels.

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Day Eleven, Oasis

Hiked a quick eight miles up and down to Wenatchee. Interviewed by the State Patrol. Hiked another eight miles up and down the city looking for proper boots. Washed and swam and accomplished little, not even much poetry here. But the weather is lovely and I feel great, better than I've got a right to. Peace.

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PHOTO, the Bear I Saw

Or one very much like it.

I did not see any Tiggers or any Piglets.
But I don't doubt they saw me.

Dear Mr. Super 8

Dear Mr. Super 8:

My name is James Harry Pierce and I am walking across America.  I left Tacoma in late May and have just now arrived at the Super 8 in Wenatchee, Washington.  I will pass through no less than a dozen states and am making friends everywhere I go.

And in addition to the wonderful people I meet on the road, there are more following my adventures on line.  You see, I am "blogging" about the things I see and the people I meet.  It is flattering that they have shown such interest.  And I don't take it lightly; I am at great pains to keep my blog entertaining and up to date.  I am delighted to note that even now, less than two weeks in, there are already close to one hundred people following right along.  I hope that number increases and I will make every effort to see that it does. 

In fact, let me take this opportunity to ask my new friends--they are reading this, too--to post links to my blog anywhere on the Internet they think one will stick.  Thanks guys.  It would mean the world to me.

Anyway, every successful blog needs some sort of unifying theme. I am not yet sure what mine is.  I had hoped to make it about the positive experiences I have staying at Super 8 motels.

But we don't always get what we want, do we?  For example, I, after ten days in a tent, barely washing and stinking like a chimp, I was very much looking forward to reaching Wenatchee and staying in a Super 8 motel. Reasonable as your rates are, on this year long adventure, this is a special luxury for me.  I looked forward to your clean, comfortable room, your complimentary coffee, your courteous staff, your cooling pool and your soothing spa.  And perhaps most of all, I was looking forward to doing my laundry.  You might say it was the one thought that carried me up and over the High Cascades, though I faced dangers on all sides.

But your washing machines were broken, weren't they?  Both of them.  The polite, efficient young man at the counter refunded my quarters and drew me a very nice map to a laundromat two miles away, but that isn't the same, is it?  If you think I object to a four mile walk in the hot Eastern Washington sun, you are missing the point.  I love a nice stroll, but today is my day off.  Even our Lord took a holiday, and He never had my blisters.

I wound up washing my clothes in the bathtub, an hour better spent by the pool.  Don't get me wrong; I got the job done, but not as easily or as well as I could have using one of those automatic machines you brag about in your brochures.  

I see you are expanding into China, God bless you.  It warms my heart to see American business thrive.  But I'd think twice before asking your good Chinese guests to wash their clothes in a tub.  It smacks, frankly, of racism.

Now I don't know what we can do to make this right.  It is all too fresh in my mind now.  I'll let you stew on it for a day or two before I turn to my new friends for answers.  I believe at the least some small refund is called for, but do not let us stop there.  Use your imagination.  It is free-wheeling, quick-thinking, fast-on-your-feet action that makes American business great.

Congratulations on all your success, God bless you, and God bless America.

Yours respectfully,
James Harry Pierce
jamesacrossamerica.blogspot.com

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