Elevation: flattish and windy
Temperature: high mid 90s.
It's six am. We are sitting in the only hangout in town, a grocey store cafe. The posse has regrouped for the day over 1/2 gallon of grapefruit juice. It had been a long restless night behind the barn. 'Seemed like such a brilliant idea. Like the night we slept in a wagon on the front lawn of an insurance company and woke up on Main St. Some things seem more practical in the dark.
He was red in the face, saddened smeared across his body, but very curious about Ralph. You sit long enough in a place, you really observe people. Something about this fellow broke my heart in. Sitting with his backpack and black coffee, I saw through the facade. 11 years ago I was in thoes same shoes. I just got lucky. Lucky to have looked 12 at age 18, lucky to be white and an innocent faced girl. Like a fox, I was nimble enough to talk my way out of handcuffs and lucky enough to have people who cared. People who cared who didn't have to and it was more than I could understand at the time.
Clicking around linoleum titled floors, in funny shoes, and full spandex, helmet on, breaks down human barriers. In normal life fellows like this never much say a word to me, but all guards down, we became friends. Imagine if everyone walked around in spandex and helmets. Maybe that's the answer to world peace. He asked the teddy bears name. "Rudolf and he's 19," I said smiling as if we both knew sorrows can be washed away with the power imagination. On the way out, reminded of the gifts we take for granted every hour, we bought him breakfast. Exiting we passed 5 elderly retired farmers, gathered for the ritual morning coffee, biscuits, and conversation. Dressed in jean overalls and cowboy boots, they laugh in good company. They wear their wrinkles with a lifetime of stories while they chat over insurance policies, voting, and the prices of pastures.
As if the morning over caffine and gratitude wasn't enough there suddenly became a brand new wrinkle in brain. Something that can never be forgotten. Like riding up upon a freshly hit coyote. Her spirit was looking down at the body she was given, warm bright red blood drizzled from her mouth. It stained the pavement writing murder into the cracks. "Blindfolds Ralph," but the 19 year old was too feisty to obey and squealed in angst. "And that is why I strap you in till your lungs collapse." Ruthless cars screamed by, shock hit. The left front wheels of a speeding weapon struck the dead bleeding head of the girl we named Francis. The body jumped on impact crumbling her skull in front of our eyes. Blood splashed across action boy and sickening adrenaline ran though veins. Such disregard to life forms: the disconnect that people have flying cars down HWYs. Murderous thoughts of witnessing death ran too scarily through minds to move. And we sat in gasps on the side of the road. The image replayed vividly in slow motion for hours.
Eastern Washington, no apples here, desert desolate fields flooded with wheat. Towns of nothingness, but silohs and mills, smells of grain and oil fill the air. Lincoln county is the 2nd largest county for producing wheat in the world when in full production; 2nd behind somewhere in Russia. And the one open AC hut in town was the local bar, our bartender being the farmer of town that evening, and the crowd all the local grain growers. We drilled the crowd like they were professors of wheat, magical men producing an Italian staple. The facts spilled out: small farm equated to 3200 acres, and big ones...20,000, owned by the Canadians. It's a sore topic. Our lovely government subsides many of these farmers $50 and acre to keep the fields barron. This keeps the prices per bussel high and in rich demand. Fascinating. We could have camped in the bar with knowledge flowing like this from the source.
But the desert road of sunset magnetically call us west. Silence of alphfault echoed, endless miles could be pinpointed on a road where cars pass once and hour, and suddenly nothing but the current moment mattered. Ralph's belly covered in sticky road tar was forgotten admist the quilted wheat fields beneath a purple sky. A parried of random white cow mooed in orchestra rhythm as we passed. Beetles the size of potatoes look at us with funny stares. Beauty from every corner blanketed us. Endless pastels change the harshness of the afternoons sun scorch in soft fields and shrubs. The moon rises in the east as the sun vibrently says goodnight in the west and exhausted, we drift into dreamland in a very Magical desert.
Eastern Washington:
Odessa, the town of wheat:
And exploration:
It just never ends, the flood of wheat:
Life...off the bike:
magical deserts sunset:
Field notes: hwy 912 W. Good road in the morning. Traffic would be heavy in the evening, people headed home from Spokane. Brookes Rd, good road. Hwy 2, shoulder bigger than traffic lane, but lots of cars. Hwy 28s awesome road. Big shoulder, very few cars. Very few stops, but all tiny town along the way have a fascinating story.