the next few days

I'm off to Longview in the morning. The residence I'll be staying at is 14.48 miles from where I am right now. I'll be staying there a single night, then waking up extremely early (maybe 4AM) for my most brutal walk to date: a 28.56-mile walk from the Longview area to a Safeway in Woodland, where I'll be picked up and driven to a home that's actually 14-15 miles outside of Woodland (I'll be dropped off at the Safeway again the following morning; this is based on the "chase car" scenario), before moving on to Vancouver on the Fourth (as you probably realize, that's Vancouver, Washington), where I'll try to book a hotel again.

That's not how I wanted to do things, but I don't want to crash anybody's Fourth of July celebration, and I'm on schedule to arrive in Vancouver on the Fourth. It's a shame, really, because there are, according to my manager Alan, plenty of CouchSurfing hosts in Vancouver. Were I not arriving on the Fourth, I'd have no trouble staying with a CS host, but as someone averse to partying in general, I'd only be making myself uncomfortable by being the stranger at someone's shindig. I need to check on hotel availability on the Fourth, but I have to get to bed now, as it's nearly 1AM and I have to wake up at 8.

By the way, the motel I'm in is probably the best of the motels I've stayed in that are in the $40-50 range: while you do get a lot of traffic noise through the front windows, the walls are more solid than those of a typical motel, which means less sonic nonsense from the neighbors. I appreciate that.

So: Castle Rock to Longview, Longview to a point in Woodland where I'll be picked up, then Woodland to Vancouver, where I'll probably need to rest my blistery feet again for two nights. I may also have a church to stay at when I reach The Dalles, about 50 or so miles east of Portland, Oregon.

Too bad I'm already south of Vader, WA. I would have liked to pay tribute to my childhood, uh, hero.


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