Day Five
Puyallup to Centralia, 56 miles.
Today’s ride was on familiar roads, following the Seattle to Portland (STP) ride route that I have done many times with my strong-riding brothers. This year’s STP was just a couple of weeks ago and the painted route markers are still on the road. Hard to get lost.
Just a few minutes off the route was Pacific Lutheran University. I stopped by to sit on the bench where I decided to take a gap year and begin this bicycle circumnavigation of the United States. I took the ‘80-‘81 academic year off, worked over the summer and into the fall to make some money, and got on a Greyhound bus in Seattle on January 2, 1981, beginning what has turned in a four-decade quest.
In 1980, I was an under graduate American History major who realized that none of my professors and none of my fellow history majors knew anything about America that they hadn’t just read in books and earnestly discussed in seminars. Then they wrote stilted paper after stilted paper on the subject. In other words, they didn’t “know” anything. I decided to get on a bike, pedal around the country, and take a look for myself. What did I discover? It became a bit of a mantra for me: “Anything you can say about America is true”. Anything. It’s exactly as bad and as good as you can describe. Seriously. What a nuthouse. Recently I ran across a Winston Churchill quote that help clarify what I’ve been thinking for some time. I paraphrase: “Americans will always do the right thing, after they have tried everything else”. Bingo. Nuthouse.
Roads are good, as usual. Most drivers are courteous, as usual. It was a bluebird day with an intermittent tailwind, very nice riding. I lighted my trailer in Roy, where Joan met me, by off-loading gear I know I won’t need in the next couple of days. After that, the lightened trailer didn’t whiplash me as much.
I rolled up to the McMenamins’ Olympic Hotel right on schedule, at 5:00 PM.
After a long, powerful shower, I washed my clothes as Rick Steves teaches, using the hotel shampoo to stomp them into the shower pan to clean them. (“Don’t use hotel shampoo on your hair!”, says Rick. “Use it on your clothes!”).
After a cheeseburger and a couple of Hammerhead ales, I will time to wrap up this post and get some rest.
Tomorrow will be the longest day of this trip so far, 78 miles to Paradise Point State Park, north of Vancouver Washington. The day after, I will cross the Columbia River into Oregon and Washington will be checked off the list.
