Bolt-upright in bed, I realized that the sound was from some other room. A man and a woman began arguing about who was sleeping with who, who decided to fuck who, and exactly how late someone was allowed to stay out when they said they'd be out late. The Class of '78 from Spokane's North Central High School was at it again.
I dozed off lightly for a little while longer, and probably slept until a quarter of six. Quickly stuffing the few belongings I used into my bag, I got off onto what would be the last day of my trip. I was still dozy, and completely blamed the fools from the high school for my grogginess. While vowing to write a letter to the school district (after finding their address in the blue pages of the phone book), I set my alarm for seven-thirty. By cranking the volume, I was sure to wake the slumbering drunks long after I was gone. Fighting fire with fire at this level is something I don't usually do, but I was tired and homesick and wanted to put the screws down on those idiots. They're thirty-eight years old and act like they've never stayed in a hotel before.
When I headed out of the room, I passed an older woman who was carrying a book. "It's finally quiet!" I whispered to her. In the parking lot, the sky finally caught my eye—it was leadden and full of rain. The Weather Channel still wasn't available in my room, so I had to press on without any information about what was awaiting me.
The bike was running great, and I wanted to tighten the chain one more time. I wrenched the bolt open and then charged it all in a little. Back to the room for my other bags, and then I rode to the front entrance to check out. I'd done this fifteen times before, and the next time I did it I would be in my own bedroom.
My mail was waiting for me at the post office after my vacation hold, and I just couldn't wait to go and pick it up. If I returned home before about noon, it would be no problem to head to the PO and get everything before they closed. It would be soothing to rest in my own bed, at my own house, and catch up on my own mail.
A few bystanders commented on my riding in the rain. I know it will suck: why do those people have to remind me? The desk clerk showed no concern for me as a customer. That the police had to come by and make my stay a quiet one didn't obligate him to ask me what I thought of my room or the hotel. Oh, well: I would probably never be back.
When I threw a leg over the bike after checking out, I realized immediately that I didn't tighten down the axle nut. It just came to me—and luckily so. Who knows what would happen to the bike if I just took off with the rear axle all sloppy? To get to the nut, I had to remove a bag. On my hands and knees, I quickly tightened the bolt and got on my way.
There were no highway signs, and I cruised around a bit. I tried to use what I remembered from last night's little jaunt to find the highway, but to no avail. Finally, I looped around and went past the hotel down the hill towards Spokane's center. There was a Texaco station and I filled-up. This tank wouldn't last me all the way back home, but it would be very close.
On the way out of Spokane, the skies were gray. It wasn't actually raining, but it was cold and windy. I continued to cut west on I-90. After about thirty minutes, the clouds broke a little bit but I was still clold so I pushed into a rest stop and zipped up the rest of the things on my jacket. This weather actually had me shivering. Standing still in the rest stop wasn't as frigid, but getting back out immediately made me cold.
My riding was becoming aggressive, and I knew I had to keep an eye on myself if I really wanted to make it home today without stuffing it. As I approached George, home of a huge outdoor ampitheater that overlooks the Columbia River Gorge (and poetically named "The Gorge at George"), I noticed that traffic thickened. Most of the cars were stuffed full of teenagers who drove unsteadily and erratically. It was a little bit nerve-wracking. I was running low on gas, and I planned to stop at Vantage. There, I could buy one more tank and close the full distance back to my driveway.
Just before Vantage, I stopped at an overlook and popped some pictures of the gorge. I could see Vantage on the other side of the river, where the huge bridge connected it to my bank. I rode the rest of the way down the hill, noting that there were stacks of teenage chicks at the rest stop dressed in midriff-baring tops and tight pants or skirts. I wondered what my middle age would be like: maybe I'm there, already. There must have been a concert at The Gorge the night before.
In Vantage, there were scads of cars everywhere. It's unfortunate, because there's only two gas stations in the town and neither is modern. Efficiencies like two-sided pumps, or pumps that take credit cards are completely foreign to the town. Plus, you have to pay first because the place is so busy and only one or two people work the whole store. It took 20 minutes to find a free pump and get gas and pay. Fortunately, nobody parked me into my slot this time.
Back on the highway, I zoomed through traffic until I found a clearing. I felt that riding the crest between packs of cars would be a good policy. By slowing to a pace matching traffic, I would avoid wicking my ass on the throttle. And I'd also be able to avoid actual contact with the teenyboppers that were around me. There were even a few lowered Civics with loud, distorted bass systems. Could you imagine driving 300 miles in two days in such a car?
Finally, it happened: traffic suddenly slowed and there were sirens. A police cruiser was driving eastbound in our lanes, shoving people into the right-hand lane and out of the passing lane. The backup wasn't bad, but the accident was an atrocity: it looked like one car spun out, hit another and they both smashed a third and fourth into the ditch. Some victims stood around nervously and a couple were being loaded into ambulances. I wondered where the ambulance teams came from.
Once the traffic cleared, I got on it again and tried to distance myself from the stupid kids. Driving should be a skill that's graded and earned; if you're seventeen years old, you should have no business on the highway 200 miles from home with no sleep. Your license should be graduated as your skill warrants.
The rest of the ride was uneventful. I went a little too fast, but I was so eager to return home... I didn't need to stop anymore for gas, but pulled off one more time to change tapes. Before I new it, I was in Cle Elum and on my way up the east side of the Cascades.
I sailed over the pass, and started my descent. This area has seen my motorcycle enough for me to feel as if I was already home. Ironically, I couldn't quite remember which exit to take to get to my house the back way—I knew I wanted either the Preston/Fall City exit, but I wondered if I should take the North Bend exit and ride exactly the way I came back on day one. That is, taking WA-202 Snoqualmie Falls.
Going down the hill and around the bend, I got distracted by daydreaming about my return home and completely missed the west-side North Bend exit. My mind was racing with a list of things to do—clean up, take out trash, run laundry. I Think that, at the instant I blew past the North Bend exit, I Was trying to remember exactly what was in my saddle bags. I was wondering if I could just dump them completely into the washing machine or if I had to sort through them first.
I rode past the exit for WA-18. I was eager for them to open it, and I hoped it would be a decent road. Some developer had built a huge community of homes there; I heard there were nearly 1000 new homes in the single development. My friends told me that they were packed tight, ticky-tacky houses. You'd have a huge commute because your address was in the coutnry, but you would end up living right next door to someone. But it would be nice to have a way to cut off of I-90 directly north —the road north of here came out just east of Snoqualmie Falls, eliminating the slowest parts of WA-202 from the trip back from I-90.
I kept trying to remember the exit I wanted as I screamed westbound. The speed limit here as 70, but I regularly travelled 85 or so. I started climbing towards the next exit, and everyone tapped their brakes. Bailing for the WA-202 exit here, which would go through the outlet shops and towards WA-202 closer to the city center of North Bend, I stopped at the ramp in a backup of traffic that was probably there only for the shops.
But everyone had been on their brakes because there was a pile of state troppers at the top of the exit. There were three or four cruisers and half a dozen motorcylces--one of the cruisers was towing a flat trailer with most of the bikes on it! The state was clearly looking forward to some serious revenue generation on this day. I decided to go straight and get back on the highway to avoid both the traffic and the cops.
After a few miles, the Preston exit came up and I bailed out. These roads are very familiar to me because of my riding habit—I'm always out here going or coming. But there was a truck in front of me closely following the 25 mile per hour speed limit, and I couldn't find a way to pass him on the windy road. Washington's woods surrounded me on either side and I tried to relax and enjoy the last few miles. Finally, at the junction with WA-202 in Fall City, the truck turned the other way and the road was all mine.
After a little traffic, I zipped onto the little state highway. I edged out of the town and wicked it up when the speed limit was raised. The road had been paved since I left, and the tarmac was smooth and sticky. There were no lane lines, though, so I had to carefully choose when to pass my victims. A dozen or so cars succumbed to me and my motorcycle as I headed towards my house.
There's a shocking feeling in driving across country and then finally returning home. Dirty laundry is replaced by accomplishment, and uncertain ideas about routes and neighborhoods are erased by the comfort in knowing exactly where you are and where you're going.
At the intersection with Ames Lake Road, WA-202 was all torn up. And the intersection was, too. Ames Lake Road previously joined with WA-202 in a Y-shaped intersection, where cars going east would take a turn and cars going west would take a different turn. The state had apparently decided that wasn't safe—and it wasn't, particularly so because of the hill—and was replacing it with a regular tee-bone intersection with turn lanes and everything. The land inside the triangle was now gorged and paved, and the workers were scurrying about to try to get the busy road patched up and finished before the rush hour on Monday.
The bike handled the bumps just fine. I was less than five miles from home now. The nursery, and the remote Texaco convenience store, and the Albertson's supermarket all scrolled by. Through the light at 208th, then just another mile around the corner—and I could see the entrance to my subdivision. Traffic was streaming down the hill towards me, so I camped out in the left-turn lane. I was lucky to have turn lanes in front of my development, since so few other places had them along WA-202.
While I waited for a gap in the traffic, I noticed that a grey car was about to pull out of my street and take a left onto WA-202 eastbound. I didn't think much of it, since I knew I had the right of way. But the grey car began turning almost directly at me! I laid on the horn and the guy didn't slow down, so I swerved wide. I wanted to make sure I could find the car as it came at me, but I was very worried about the curb and the ditch behind it. The road is so architected for storm water to enter a drainage ditch there.
The guy finally stopped in the middle of the road after narrowly missing
me. Once again, I weigh 230 pounds and ride a completely black motorcycle
that weighs over 500 pounds with my luggage on it. The 65-watt halogen
bulb on the front is very bright, but I'm sure this clown (with license
plates that end in FEH) would have explained it away with
something like: "I didn't see you".
What an irony, to ride 7000-plus miles and nearly get slammed off the bike right in front of my own house. Cursing under my breath, I made it back onto the road as the oncoming cars beeped at me, but didn't slow down, either. (What a bunch of knobs.)
Rounding the corner at the top of the hill, I made it into my driveway and saw my lawn immediately: it was dead and brown for lack of water. Immediately, I thought of going to the hardware store and buying a timer to attach to my hose so I could water the lawn automatically. Of course, no such thought had occurred to me before my trip.
Carrying a couple of my bags, I went into my house and walked around. Everything seemed in great shape, though my own house smelled differently than I remembered it.
Much to my surprise, I had some new messages. Apparently, the woman that I had met before leaving decided to call back. She seemed pretty eager to talk with me, and actually left more than one message. That was great news; while I was able to put her out of my mind for the trip, I did look forward to finally talking with her. What would happen?
After I returned from the post office, I made sure to call her back.
Finished on 19 August, 1998.