Day 12: Dayton, WA to Lewiston, ID: Just a Taste

I like descriptive titles for my blog posts, but I miss trying to think up clever ones. I'm going to start using both, because I'm an adult and I can do what I want. I don't think academia has decided on the correct way to blog yet, anyway.

Before I left the New Yorkers yesterday, they mentioned they were planning to wake up at 4 to ride while it's cool. I guess my body agreed, because I woke up without an alarm at around 5:15. This was a very good thing. It was supposed to be hotter than yesterday, and the early start let me climb more than 2,000 feet over 30+ miles to make Pomeroy well before noon. Side note: most of my times, distances, and elevations are pretty approximate because I'm mostly ignoring the metrics. I spend enough of my life trying to make numbers get bigger, I don't need to be doing that on my ride. I also don't want it to be about the bragging rights instead of just letting go of some ego for a while.

It's Sunday, so Pomeroy was closed. All of it. I left for Lewiston, which meant a short, tough climb before a long sweeping descent that flattened out to a pleasant ride along the Snake River into Clarkston, which transitions into Lewiston once you cross the Snake into Idaho. Clarkston is smaller, but not bike-hostile, has things that are open on Sunday, and has an RV park that didn't (vocally) mind me napping in their gazebo. Lewiston has signs declaring "No bike riding" everywhere, though people do it anyway. I stopped next to a fountain to eat, and some kids showed up to play in the fountain. Their parents gave me a bunch of dirty looks even though I was there first. I stopped at a coffee shop and found it closed, so I hopped back to the Clarkston side of the river to spend some Starbucks gift cards I never sought the opportunity to use in default life. I'm writing from that Starbucks now. One old man keeps staring me down, but I can't tell if he disapproves of the transient that's carrying a laptop, or if he just wants to say hi but doesn't know how to do it. I waved, but he looked away. Maybe I'll bug him later.

I've been at this Starbucks for probably 3 hours now, because I plan to sleep at Hell's Gate State Park, which is just along a nice riverfront trail from here. I don't know why it's named that, but it's probably fine. I've already put in 60+ miles with a whole bunch of climbing today, and that's enough for me - at this rate, I'll make Illinois before Halley arrives, which would just be awkward. It's easier to be a transient for a day in each place than it would be to hang around one place for a while. I'll probably stop in Missoula for a few days to kill time instead.

Anyway, loitering as a homeless-by-choice transient hipster in a Starbucks has given me a chance to check the internet, hence the title. I was a little hesitant to re-expose myself, but I don't think I regret it. I checked Reddit, but kind of naturally lost interest after scanning my front page. Same with Facebook. Is this what it's like to have a healthy relationship with the internet?

As I described in my first post, I was concerned that I tend to hide from the world by binging on Reddit and video games whenever I don't have something that feels necessary to do. Worse, my unconscious defined "necessary" differently than I'd like - helping around the house or fulfilling promises made outside of work didn't fit the bill, only work-related things were imperative enough to get my ass in gear. I'd remember my other commitments, feel bad about them, and then use media to hide from the bad feelings instead of just doing what I agreed to do. My guess is that the internet isn't as addictive now because I don't have commitments to hide from, which feels like an insight to keep in mind.

I don't know what I want my relationship with media to be once I'm back in the default world. Do I take the Alcoholics Anonymous route, declare myself always an addict, and delete social media and gaming accounts? Do I dive into the world of productivity management and find some strategy with a quirky name to "hack my brain"? Maybe I should use a points system, like 1 hour of fuck-around time per 2 hours of productivity? How do I even define each category? I thought about this for a while, but have no answer yet. It'll probably take some experimentation once I get settled again.

This Starbucks is off the route I'm following, but of course the New Yorkers just rode by. Even when I only knew them from the tracks they left on Old Moody Lane, they've consistently ended up on accidental detours that take them through forest fires, thorns, gravel, and other things. It's been interesting to travel separately, because I keep running into them when they don't expect it. So far, I've always seen them first and just popped in out of nowhere, which has been fun (at least for me). I've been a little faster than they have due to our respective loadouts, but I also like to sit and do nothing or wander randomly trying to talk to people, so overall our paces about even out.

Now it's 7 PM and it's still an oven outside. Maybe it's the proximity to Hell's Gate, maybe it's the predominantly rocky geology around here that traps and radiates heat long after the sun goes down, I don't know. Either way, I'm going to watch Avatar: The Last Airbender until Ethan and Jon get done with their quest to find good pizza.