By: Dan Trew
Leaving Montana I felt as though I should be heading home. Instead, I was less than halfway through my adventure, both in terms of days as well as mileage. The real heart of the trip was about to begin. Spending the remainder of my voyage essentially by myself and relying on a good mix of luck and forethought to get me across the country more times than would be considered practical in most circles.
As it turned out, my tiny rental car was not well suited to the 75 mile per hour climbs up and over mountains shrouded in pervasive precipitation. On several instances I thought for sure that my car would let out a rasping cough and pull itself to the side of the road, where it would then have stern words with me about just how long it was appropriate to put the proverbial petal to the industrial floor protector on top of the metal. The answer, as it turns out, was long enough to get back to Spokane before my choice rental car facility closed.
I reserved a night in a nearby hotel with zero intent on actually sleeping there, but more as a more secure place to stash my baggage and provide suitable restroom facilities at my whim. To that end it was marvelous. Free of the chains of baggage weighing me down I set forth into the great City of Spokane, or at least the small section I felt confident I could walk to and not be accosted for vagrancy.
My first order of business was to visit a local book store and peruse their collection of dry British fiction written by the late Terry Pratchett. I subsequently picked up Good Omens, which is the name of book and not just the vibe I got from standing inside a combination bookstore/cafe/bank/law firm. Litterer secured, I lowered my brow a bit and decided to partake in a very good waste of a handful of hours that consisted of dinner and a movie. As luck would have it, a truly moderate mall was only a few blocks away. My completely self-contained world of consumerism contained two chain restaurants and a dozen or so smaller vendors peddling loose definitions of food. Before I sacrificed my stomach to the god of commerce, I took in a quick academy award nominee and cultured myself a bit by it. For the dinner aspect of my evening, I opted for a chain restaurant known for the cultivation of small, green, pitted fruits. Satiated but still having 6 hours to my train’s scheduled departure, I went back to the never ending well of entertainment and sat through another movie of decidedly higher action and lower thought. Really a perfect way to go about moving the little hand a tick or two.
With no further movies playing that evening and really nothing legal to do in the shopping mall, I wandered my way back to my storage locker with questionably maintained bedding. Not wanting to earn the ire of the travel deities, I sacrificed a small hour of the morning to rest and quickly set out catch my train.
My train decided to be an hour late and also to make sure that any chance I had of sleeping my way to Seattle was dashed by the presence of a service disruption just 3 hours down the line. Extricating myself from my steel transport to a lesser steed at five in the morning is challenging on its own, let alone after essentially negative sleep. The accommodations on my bus were Spartan at best, but offered just enough comfort for me to pass mostly out and awake a few miles from Seattle.